President Karis: Hopefully EU-Poland stand-off will not escalate

The confrontation between Poland and the European Union relates to the principles of the rule of law, and hopefully will not escalate further, President Alar Karis said Thursday. The president made his remarks while on an official visit to Poland, meeting with President Andrzej Duda, where the pair talked security issues for the most part.

Karis said: “Estonia’s stance and Estonia’s position is clear. We are a state governed by the rule of law, and we are guided by these principles. As to what has been said, we hope that dialogue with the EU will lead to some kind of solution which does not escalate, but reaches a positive outcome.”

“Poland is for us, a major, friendly and it see things another way. When the current Polish president entered office, his first visit was to Estonia, not to any larger countries. So Poland is an important country for us, as are other neighboring countries I have managed to get to,” Karis continued, talking to ERR in Warsaw.

Security was the main topic on the table, given Poland’s geographical location, its status as a NATO member like Estonia and the recent migratory pressure placed on its borders by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Belaurs.

However, the elephant in the room was its ongoing confrontation with Brussels, while judicial independence is still cause for concern in Poland, ERR reports.

On a lighter note, Karis, who until becoming president was director of the National Museum (ERM) in Tartu, was taken to see some newly-arrived archives, including photos and letters, from Michał Sokolnicki.

Sokolnicki was private secretary to interwar Polish leader Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s and a long-time Polish ambassador to Turkey. The archives cover not only the interwar period, but World War Two and through to as late as the 1960s, and also contain references to Estonia.

Since entering office on October 11, Karis has already met with the presidents of Finland and Lithuania; a planned meeting with Egils Levits, the Latvian president, had to be postponed after Levits contracted the coronavirus.

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