The get-together, entitled “Defending Europe,” will focus on issues such as combating depopulation and protecting energy sovereignty, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
Hosted by the leader of Spain’s rightist Vox party, Santiago Abascal, the meeting will begin with an official dinner on Friday evening before two working sessions are held on Saturday.
Radosław Fogiel, a spokesman for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, told reporters that the Madrid meeting would explore “ways to combat depopulation, ways to defend the energy sovereignty of European countries, as well as defence cooperation in the face of current threats, including those from the East, and the situation of the European manufacturing sector in a global context.”
Fogiel added it would be another get-together of "the signatories of the declaration of July 2021," after December's “Warsaw Summit” event.
“Hopefully, it will be another step towards working together to make sure that the European Union becomes an association of sovereign states again,” Fogiel said.
'The declaration of July 2021'
In July last year, Poland’s conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński signed a statement with several centre-right and conservative groupings represented in the European Parliament, according to media reports at the time.
The signatories included Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Abascal, Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s rightist League party, and France's presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, on behalf of their parties, as well as groupings from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Romania, according to the PAP news agency.
They called for a comprehensive, “back-to-basics” reform of the EU, with a sovereign role for European nations, arguing that people’s trust in the bloc’s institutions was being undermined by “a reinterpretation of the Treaties,” PAP reported at the time.
The weekend’s meeting in Madrid is expected to be attended by Morawiecki, Orban and Le Pen, who leads France’s National Rally party, as well as conservative and rightist leaders from Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP