Presenting the priorities of the ongoing Polish six-month presidency over the European Union, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that the key to the recovery from the crisis lay in strengthening the integration processes rather than reducing the achievements in building a united Europe.
In his pro-European speech, Tusk said that the best things the Europeans had ever done had been the decision to unite.
We have a financial crisis but there is even a deeper crisis, a crisis of mistrust. The response to this crisis is not the reduction of Europe and of what has been created for years in the building of Europe, said the Polish PM criticising nationalism and protectionism as well as setting internal barriers in Europe.
The Polish EU presidency focuses on three priorities: European integration as the source of growth, Secure Europe and Europe benefiting from openness.
In the next six months Poland will see to it that an accession treaty be signed with Croatia and that an agreement on cooperation and association with Ukraine be compiled.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has expressed expectations of Poland to be engaged in the preparation of Croatia's accession with the same resolve as shown by the previous Hungarian EU presidency.
