Four European Nations Unite Behind India’s Push for UNSC Permanent Membership

At their first joint meeting on the sidelines of UNGA, V4 foreign ministers said India "must be at the table" as a permanent Security Council member

PGurus Newsdesk

September 22, 2026

Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic: all four just endorsed India's permanent UNSC seat

Four Nations, One Message: India Belongs at the UNSC Table

India’s long-running campaign for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council received a fresh boost Monday, with the four nations of Europe’s Visegrád Group — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — publicly throwing their support behind New Delhi’s bid.

The endorsement came at the first-ever V4-India Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, held on the sidelines of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly in New York. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met with Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Juraj Blanár, Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Petr Macinka, and Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Anita Orbán, under Slovakia’s current presidency of the V4 group.

“Must be at the table”

Speaking after the meeting, Blanár delivered the group’s message plainly. India, as a part of the Global South country, an upcoming superpower in the Indo-Pacific region, must be at the table as the permanent member of the UN Security Council, he said, adding that all four V4 nations were united in that view.

Jaishankar called the inaugural gathering a “new historic occasion,” and the two sides agreed to deepen cooperation across a wide range of areas — political, economic, technological, defence and people-to-people ties — while also agreeing to hold annual foreign ministers’ meetings and establish an annual business forum. India’s Ministry of External Affairs described the meeting as an important step in formalizing engagement between India and the Visegrád bloc at the ministerial level.

Part of a broader reform push

India has long argued that the UNSC’s structure, unchanged since 1945, no longer reflects today’s geopolitical realities — a period when much of Asia and Africa remained under colonial rule and many now-major economies and populous nations did not yet exist as independent states. India has served as an elected, non-permanent Security Council member eight times, most recently in 2021-22, but continues to press for permanent status.

One of the thorniest sticking points in the broader reform debate is veto power. The five existing permanent members — the US, UK, France, Russia and China — hold veto rights that elected members lack, and India has insisted that any new permanent members should receive the same rights and responsibilities as existing ones, rather than being relegated to a second-tier category.

India’s bid has already drawn support from other quarters in recent years, including the United States, United Kingdom, France and Russia — though unanimous backing from all five existing permanent members remains elusive. The V4’s collective endorsement adds another European voice to that growing, if still incomplete, chorus.

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