Committee for Polish-Russian Cooperation Strategy holds 8th meeting in Warsaw

Ministers Sikorski and Lavrov signed a joint foreign ministers’ declaration "Program 2020 in Polish-Russian Relations" which lists priorities and orientations of cooperation between the two countries for the next few years. “The Programme will allow us to achieve even better results in joint endeavours so as to give a new quality to our mutual relations,” said Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a press conference. 

Later, MFA Undersecretary of State Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz together with the Russian President\'s Special Envoy for International Cultural Cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoy signed “Joint Declaration on Preparations for the Poland Year in Russia and the Russia Year in Poland in 2015.” Finally, Poland’s and Russia’s top diplomats awarded Polish and Russian foreign ministers’ diplomas “For outstanding accomplishments in bringing the people of Poland and Russia closer together and in mutual understanding" to two laureates. This year, the diplomas went to the Polish actress Joanna Moro, who played the leading role in a television series about the life of Anna German and the well-known Russian director and playwright Ivan Wyrypaev, who has had long contacts with Poland.  “These diplomas go to the people who create the Poland brand in Russia and the Russia brand in Poland,” noted Minister Sikorski. 

Ministers Sikorski and Lavrov discussed economic relations between Poland and Russia. Russia is Poland’s important neighbour and business partner; it is Poland’s fifth export market and its second import market. In 2012, bilateral trade amounted to USD 37.9 billion. During the first three quarters of 2013, Polish exports reached USD 8 billion, up by 12.7% in comparison with the same period last year and exceeded by over 3.4 percentage points the rise in Poland’s overall exports. “I say this with satisfaction that relations between our societies, regions, companies, as well as governments are better than what the media in both countries would sometimes like us to believe. Russia is Poland’s important neighbour and business partner,” said Minister Sikorski at a joint press conference with the chief of Russia’s diplomacy. “We want to create a favourable climate for Russian companies doing business in Poland and for Polish companies doing business in the Russian federation. We will support enlarging the structure of traded goods, primarily with state-of-the-art technology products. We will give major importance to the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. These objectives and tasks are part of the Programme,” said Minister Lavrov. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the ministries of culture, education, science and higher education, infrastructure and development, and the economy. 

Local Border Traffic between Poland’s north-eastern voivodeships and the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast was an important point on the agenda of the 8th meeting of the Committee for Polish-Russian Cooperation Strategy. The ministers underscored the Local Border Traffic Agreement’s great success. The introduction of visa-free travel regime has become a very strong incentive not only for the border regions’ economic development, but also for reinvigorating tourism and improving people-to-people contacts. From July 2012 until last week, close to 200,000 applications for LBT permits have been filed. “Today, I have given Minister Lavrov the Russian language version of the Polish report on the impact of this agreement on cross-border trade. I offer Minister Lavrov the opportunity to do a joint presentation of this report in Brussels, because Poland in the EU has always been supporting visa liberation with all its eastern neighbours. This report can provide a weighty argument,” emphasized Poland’s top diplomat at the press conference. The report presents the results of public opinion surveys on LBT and its positive impact on bilateral relations. 

Polish and Russian delegations discussed the Poland Year in Russia and the Russia Year in Poland in 2015 at closed group and working group meetings. The organisation of this endeavour will provide a great opportunity for mutually beneficial cooperation in the economy, culture, tourism, between young people, regions and for people-to-people contacts. The projects that will be developed should widely present modern-day achievements of our two countries and should be addressed to a large audience, especially young people. Minister Sikorski said that he hoped for a number of cultural, social and local government projects that will complement government initiatives to be put in place as early as in 2014. 

When the two ministers met in private, Minister Sikorski again requested his Russian counterpart that Russia return the wreckage of the Tu-154M plane, which crashed on 10 April, 2010 near Smolensk. “I again requested [my Russian counterpart] to deliver on the promise made by Russia’s President Medvedev in December 2010 to return our property – the wreckage of the President’s plane and to meet our requests for legal assistance relating to the investigation into the plane crash on 10 April 2010,” said  Sikorski after his meeting with Lavrov. Historical issues were also raised; among them the hand-over to Poland of the missing files of the Russian investigation into the Katyn massacre. Satisfaction was expressed with the activities of the work of the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Matters and of the Centres for Dialogue and Understanding. Interest was also expressed in increasing youth exchange, intensifying academic cooperation, also in field of education, as well as in the development of tourism and transport links between our two countries, including the high-speed Berlin-Warsaw-Moscow rail connection. 

During the ministers’ private meeting and consultations between the Polish and Russian MFA delegations, opinions about current international developments were also exchanged.