Brussels, 23/08/2000 (Agence Europe) - The President of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine, will be on an official visit to Poland on 28 and 29 August.
In Warsaw on Monday, Mrs. Fontaine will meet the Republic's President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Prime Minister Jerzy Busek and the leaders of the two houses of the Polish Parliament, with whom she will discuss Poland's prospects for joining the European Union. According to a press release, while noting that the European Union was "being demanding" towards candidate countries, Mrs. Fontaine stressed that the majority of the reforms being asked of them would anyway have been essential, "as demonstrated in particular in the coal sector, steel and agriculture". Mrs. Fontaine, who says she sees "encouraging signs in Poland, which has the most dynamic economy in Central Europe" and also places emphasis on the need for Poland to take on board in its legislation Community environmental protection standards, will visit a waste water treatment plant in a Warsaw suburb that has been brought up to European standards of water purity through the backing of the PHARE programme, and will meet farmers in a market of the capital.
Tuesday, Mrs. Fontaine will participate in the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the trade union Solidarnosc, in the shipyards of Gdansk, and, in the presence of Lech Walesa, she will also participate in the inauguration of a museum dedicated to Solidarnosc. Also on Tuesday, Mrs. Fontaine will visit Krakow and will go to the former Auschwitz Camp, where she will be accompanied by a former prisoner of the Camp, and the Secretary General of the Jewish Congress.
Regarding a possible date for Poland's membership of the EU, Mrs. Fontaine recalled that the European Parliament wanted enlargement to be achieved by the European elections of June 2004, and "as wide as possible, so that the citizens of the new Member States concerned may take part in the ballot and that their elected representatives could themselves take part in the procedure of putting in place the new Commission that will take office in January 2005".