London and Warsaw sign new defense and security agreement. This should lead to close collaboration within NATO in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk met his British counterpart Keir Starmer in Warsaw on Friday to discuss, among other things, cooperation within NATO and support for Ukraine. Mr Starmer’s visit came after a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday.
During this meeting, the Polish Prime Minister presented to his British counterpart the priorities of the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union. The two prime ministers also discussed mutual relations, migration issues and international security, with a focus on defense cooperation and continued support for Ukraine.
At the press conference, they both expressed their intention to sign a Polish-British security and defense cooperation agreement later this year and to strengthen cooperation in the Baltic and North Seas .
“We are opening a new joint program office in Bristol to deliver our £4 billion partnership to provide Poland with the next generation of air defense systems”Mr Starmer said.
The British Prime Minister also visited the site of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, expressing his “absolute horror” for what he saw and vowing to tackle the growing anti-Semitism that is raising fears among Jews, including in Britain.
“Nothing could prepare me for the absolute horror of what I saw here. It is absolutely heartbreaking”he said in a statement released after his morning tour of the memorial site with his wife, Victoria, who is Jewish.
He highlighted the rise in anti-Semitism since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Mr Starmer’s centre-left Labor Party has faced accusations of anti-Semitism. In 2020, Britain’s equal opportunities watchdog found in a scathing report that Labor Party officials had failed to stamp out anti-Semitism and had committed “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination” under Mr Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
Video editor • Rory Elliott Armstrong
