Versailles meeting without Poland: Foreign Minister reacts
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
23.02.2017 08:12
Asked why Poland was not invited to a meeting of French, German, Spanish and Italian leaders in Versailles ahead of the upcoming EU summit on the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has said Poland will hold parallel talks with its neighbours in March.
Witold Waszczykowski. Photo: Zwez / MSC via wikimedia commons
French President Francois Hollande invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy and Italian PM Paolo Gentiloni for a meeting on March 6.
Commenting on this, Waszczykowski said on Wednesday: "We were informed about this way of proceeding by Chancellor Angela Merkel, when she visited Poland (...) – that we will first talk in groups."
Waszczykowski noted that the meeting of the four countries – France, Germany, Spain and Italy – is a new format.
He announced that Poland will participate in parallel debates in regional groups, for example the Visegrad group (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) or the Bucharest nine (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary).
On the European Union summit itself, Waszczykowski said that if a debate on changing the EU treaty begins, Western European countries might enforce changes that would be unfavorable for Poland.
"Some politicians, such as French or German, have been openly admitting for several months that a mistake was made during the enlargement of the European Union, because if it had been decided to take us in, then at the same time there should have been conditions: ‘welcome to the EU, but this EU. Period’," said Waszczykowski.
"So you have the right to be quiet. Join the EU and be quiet. It is already being said that the right to initiate any reform should be taken away from us," he said. (mol/pk)
Source: IAR, PAP