The Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union aims to “accelerate” negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a press conference in Warsaw on Wednesday 15 January, in the presence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Polish Minister for European Affairs, Adam Szłapka, welcomed the “very ambitious” programme of the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, with whom he has already met four times. “We need to show Ukraine that the EU’s doors are open” and work with Ukraine to “demonstrate to sceptics that the accession process is based on merit”, he added.
Mr Tusk urged his European counterparts to follow his country’s example in terms of defence spending. If the Member States spent as much as Poland, we would spend “10 times as much” as Russia, which must understand that Europeans are “determined” and are not waiting for someone else to take charge, he said. Investing massively in defence will also demonstrate to the incoming Trump administration that the European Allies are no longer neglecting the security challenge posed by Russia.
Mr Tusk, who came into contact with Donald Trump when he was President of the European Council, nevertheless acknowledged that American military aid to Ukraine was “priceless”.
Poland will spend 4.7% of national GDP on defence in 2025, the Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz stressed. This is an all-time record among the Allies and “something that would have considered unthinkable some time ago”. Spending 2% of national GDP is “no longer sufficient to act as a deterrent”, he felt, admitting that the required rearmament effort by EU countries should complement US military aid.
Thanking Poland for its “constant” support for Ukraine, Mr Zelensky welcomed the Polish Presidency’s determination to achieve “concrete results”, and spoke of the “security guarantees” that his country needs in order to negotiate “a just peace” and ensure that Russia does not invade Ukrainian territory again in the future. We should have “a map of the security guarantees” provided by the partner countries, also in military terms, he said.
“If every Donald had the same ideas about security guarantees, it would be simpler”, said Mr Tusk, referring to the American leader Donald Trump. Refusing to speculate on who will do what, even though he does not wish to send Polish soldiers to Ukraine, he advocated a common European position on the matter.
On the same day, Mr Tusk and Mr Zelensky announced an agreement on the resumption of exhumations of Polish victims of the Volhynia massacre perpetrated against 80,000 to 100,000 Polish civilians by Ukrainian nationalist militias on territory that belonged to Poland before the Second World War.
See the joint statement by Mr Tusk and Mr Zelensky: https://aeur.eu/f/f28 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)