Presidents and prime ministers from the 27 EU countries are also expected to discuss preparations for upcoming international events—such as the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, November’s Asia-Europe summit, and an Eastern Partnership meeting in December—during their meeting in the Belgian capital on Thursday and Friday.
European Council President Charles Michel has said that “recent events with regard to the rule of law” will also be debated, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
According to the Reuters news agency, EU leaders were poised to pile pressure on Morawiecki over a Polish court ruling that challenged the primacy of European laws in an escalation of ideological battles within the bloc.
The French president and the Dutch prime minister are particularly keen to prevent their governments' cash contributions to the EU from benefiting socially conservative politicians undercutting rights and values enshrined in the laws of Western liberal democracies, Reuters reported.
Before the gathering, Poland's Morawiecki was scheduled to hold talks with outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, officials told reporters.
He was also due to take part in a meeting of prime ministers from the Visegrad Group of Central European countries, the PAP news agency reported.
Ahead of the Brussels summit, Polish government spokesman Piotr Müller outlined Warsaw’s position, saying in a statement that, with regard to the pandemic, the EU should continue pro-vaccination campaigns, counter disinformation about the vaccines and “encourage third-party countries to join the bloc’s system of digital COVID-19 certificates."
On energy, “in Poland’s assessment, the European Commission should seek long-term solutions to the problem of rising gas prices, especially in view of the need to support the most vulnerable households,” Müller said.
On Tuesday, Poland's Morawiecki told the European Parliament that the scale of the energy crisis “could shake Europe in the coming weeks," as Russian giant "Gazprom's policy and consent for" the Nord Stream 2 gas link between Russia and Germany "are already resulting in record high gas prices."
In order to stem the rise in energy prices, the EU should also streamline its emissions-trading system, according to the Polish government, IAR reported.
On migration, the Polish government said the EU was “not adequately safeguarded” against "hybrid attacks" that combine migration flows with disinformation, amid an ongoing crisis on Poland’s frontier with Belarus, which is the bloc’s external border.
“Poland supports a holistic approach to managing migration and asylum policy, an approach that takes into account the external aspect of migration policy, to ensure that the EU and its member states are more effective in their actions,” Müller said, as quoted by IAR.
(gs-pm)
Source: IAR, PAP, Reuters