Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk travels to France and Germany on Monday as the three European Union members seek to bind closer in the face of mounting security risks.
With the war in Ukraine soon to enter its third year and a possible Donald Trump presidency threatening US commitment to transatlantic military alliance NATO, Warsaw, Paris and Berlin see defence unity as essential.
“Europe has to get its act together … this is a matter of answering a question about what will happen if Trump wins. We don’t have time, we must have bigger defence industry capacity,” said a Polish government source. The source added that Europe urgently needed joint production of ammunition and that
Poland was no longer blocking “strategic autonomy”: making Europe less dependent on others. The shift has been noticed elsewhere in Europe.
“Now for the first time a Polish government is saying that strengthening the European Security Defense Capabilities area is not a contradiction to a strong NATO,” said DietmarNietan, a German official in charge of cooperation with Poland.
Relations between Poland and Germany were strained by eight years of nationalist rule in Warsaw. The campaign for October’s vote saw the Law and Justice (PiS) party, in power from 2015 to 2023, cast Berlin as villain on everything from migration to energy. However, analysts say the return of former European Council president Tusk to prime minister makes it easier to reinvigorate the “Weimar Triangle” platform of political cooperation between Germany, France and Poland created in 1991.
A second Polish government source said the format gave Warsaw a way to present concerns of eastern EU members. “We talk to our neighbours first, we understand their concerns and then we are able to formulate these concerns on behalf of the region to our German and French colleagues,” the source said. Alongside Tusk’s talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, foreign ministers will meet in Paris on Monday.—INP
