Poland and Britain are close to finalising a bilateral security treaty, the Polish foreign minister has said, praising the UK’s “magnificent” leadership on Ukraine.
The pact follows a similar agreement signed with Germany in July and comes alongside negotiations with France as the UK seeks to strengthen ties with the continent’s leading military powers.
Radoslaw Sikorski, an Oxford-educated former war correspondent for the UK press who is now Poland’s foreign minister, discussed the deal with his British counterpart, Yvette Cooper, and Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, during a visit to London last week.
Sikorski said the treaty was almost finalised and thanked London for sending fighter jets to bolster his country’s air defences after a wave of incursions by Russian drones.
The agreement is expected to include further joint measures to deter Russia and steps against people-smuggling and illegal immigration.
Sikorski said that getting a grip on irregular migration was the best way to counter right-wing populist movements such as Poland’s Law and Justice party, which is in opposition.
“I believe that we have delivered on migration. We’ve built a big and beautiful fence on our border with Belarus, which is 98 per cent effective,” he said, echoing a favourite slogan of President Trump.
“I’ve raised the prices of Polish visas. We’ve ended the business of fake students doing fake studies just to get a work permit. And we’ve reduced net migration from culturally distant countries.
Sikorski spoke at an event in Westminster by the campaign group United Against Nuclear Iran, which installed a downed drone in the Speaker’s house
LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
“And in return, I’m pleased to say that for the first time in 300 years, last year, more Poles have come back to Poland than have left Poland. So Poles are voting with their feet to go back to our country.”
Asked about Nigel Farage’s proposal to scrap indefinite leave to remain for foreign citizens, which would affect many of the 700,000 Poles in the UK, Sikorski said he did not wish to intrude in British domestic politics.
However, he poked fun at Farage for retaining a taxpayer-funded pension pot from his time as an MEP in Brussels, which is projected to provide him with £73,000 a year from 2027.
“Nigel Farage, as you know, was for 20 years a member of the European parliament,” Sikorski, who is also a former MEP, said. “He was making good money out of lying about the European Union. I understand he’s still a pensioner of the European parliament — €7,500 per month. Not bad for an enemy of the European Union.”
Sikorski was speaking on the sidelines of an event held in Westminster by the campaign group United Against Nuclear Iran, which has installed an Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone that was downed in Ukraine in the Speaker’s house.
The Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone had been brought down in Ukraine
KIN CHEUNG/AP
A Sunday Times analysis has shown that the UK’s GDP per capita, excluding London, was only 3 per cent higher than Poland’s. The Polish economy is sustaining one of the fastest rates of growth in Europe.
“Much of Poland’s investment is done by our cities and our regions. Poland has an aspirational workforce,” Sikorski said.
“We don’t have huge concentrations of wealth, and we have a diversified economy. Something like 60 per cent of our trade is with the eurozone. We carried out fundamental economic reforms at the time of the collapse of communism, and it still benefits us.”