The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, will head the delegations that will take part in the 14th bilateral summit between Spain and Poland in Warsaw tomorrow, Wednesday, which will be marked by the situation in Ukraine.
The summit is expected to be attended by ten ministers from both countries, who, according to government sources consulted by The Diplomat, will include the Spanish ministers of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; Defence, Margarita Robles; Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto; Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez; and Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá. All of them will have meetings with their Polish counterparts.
For their part, the heads of government will also hold a meeting, in which one of the issues to be discussed is expected to be the repercussions that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is having on European countries.
Poland is one of the countries most affected, especially because of the migration problem caused by the war. The Ukrainian-Polish border has been crossed by four and a half million Ukrainians since the conflict began, although it is estimated that half of them have returned to their country and others have been directed to different parts of Europe.
The latest estimates suggest that there are around 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees in Poland, a country that is making an enormous effort to take in its neighbours and has been praised by its European partners, including the Spanish government. In fact, Pedro Sánchez planned to travel to Warsaw in April to express this gratitude personally to Morawiecki, with whom he has a good personal relationship, despite the two leaders’ differences in ideological approaches.
Sánchez was unable to travel to Poland then, because he had to remain in Spain to attend the vote in the Congress of Deputies on the decree of anti-crisis measures, and finally decided to postpone his trip until this summit.
The summit is a continuation of the one held in May last year, in Alcalá de Henares, although the geopolitical scenario and the economic situation then were very different from those of today. At that time, the two heads of government brought positions closer together in the face of the EU’s migration problem and defended more EU funds for both the southern and eastern neighbourhoods.
Now, solidarity with Ukraine and the economic consequences of the Russian invasion, with an eye on Europe’s energy supply, will be very present in the meetings, both between Sánchez and Morawiecki, and between the ministers and their counterparts.
Spain and Poland are countries of similar size and population, which means that in many cases they share objectives in the European Union. And in the bilateral sphere, economic relations have only grown, to the point that Poland is Spain’s main partner in Eastern Europe and Spain is among Poland’s top ten clients.
The flow of bilateral trade is around 14 billion euros and Spanish companies are present in Poland in the infrastructure, transport, automotive and banking sectors, among others. The Polish authorities are immersed in a plan to improve their infrastructures with European funds, a matter in which the Spanish experience and the capacity of our companies is of great interest to them.
A delicate issue in the bilateral relationship is the situation of the Spanish journalist Pablo González, who has been detained in Poland for five months after being arrested in an area near the border with Ukraine, accused of espionage.
