Speaking at a joint news conference after the talks, Poland's Andrzej Duda said he had briefed Austria's Alexander Van der Bellen on the situation on Poland’s frontier with Belarus amid a surge in migrants trying illegally to enter the European Union.
Duda added that the regime of Belarus' strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko was waging “a kind of hybrid war” by bringing migrants, from countries such as Iraq, by planes into Belarus, and then “pushing them mainly towards Poland, and also the Lithuanian and Estonian borders.”
“Poland has a duty to guard this frontier, which is also the border of the European Union and the Schengen zone, and we are fulfilling this task in the best possible way,” the Polish president told reporters.
He said his Austrian counterpart had raised the issue of relations within the EU, which according to the Polish president, have been “marred by political tensions with politicians from fellow member states and the European Commission.”
Duda voiced hope that “these will be resolved because what matters is responsibility for the good conduct of European affairs," Poland's PAP news agency reported.
Referring to bilateral issues, Duda told reporters that “despite the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been only a slight reduction in the vibrant economic relations between Poland and Austria.”
He said he hoped bilateral economic cooperation would bounce back and develop further at a fast pace.
Duda also told the news conference that his conversation with Van der Bellen had concerned issues such as energy security and collaboration as part of the Polish-led Three Seas Initiative.
“It would give me much satisfaction if the Austrian government decided to join the Three Seas Fund,” the Polish head of state said, as quoted by his office, referring to the Three Seas Initiative Investment Fund, which aims to help finance ambitious infrastructure projects in transport, energy and digital infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe.
Later in the day, Duda and Van der Bellen were set to attend a Polish-Austrian business forum held in Warsaw as part of the annual Congress 590 conference, Polish Radio's IAR news agency reported.
While in Warsaw on Tuesday, the Austrian president was also scheduled to meet with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the Speakers of both chambers of the Polish parliament, the lower house's Elżbieta Witek and the upper house's Tomasz Grodzki, according to the Polish presidential office.
On Monday, Van der Bellen visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in the southern Polish city of Oświęcim, where he toured an exhibition about Austrian victims as well as perpetrators of Nazi terror, the IAR news agency reported.
The Polish-led Three Seas Initiative aims to boost infrastructure, energy and business ties among 12 countries between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas.
The initiative brings together Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP