“This visit is meant above all to serve as a new opening in relations between the American and Polish administrations, because until now, as we know, over the last year and a half the government has not had such relations,” declared on Tuesday the Head of the President’s Office, Paweł Szefernaker, speaking about today’s meeting between President Karol Nawrocki and U.S. leader Donald Trump. The presidential minister sharply criticised the actions of the Foreign Minister, which took place just before the Polish head of state’s departure.
On September 3, Karol Nawrocki meets with Donald Trump in Washington. It will be his first foreign visit as president.
In the background of the visit lies a dispute between the Chancellery of the President of Poland and the Council of Ministers. The government insists that it is not the head of state but the government that conducts foreign policy. On Wednesday, after a Cabinet Council meeting, the Foreign Minister announced that guidelines had been prepared for Nawrocki, instructions on how he should conduct his talks with Trump. Yesterday, nearly a week after this announcement, he decided to remind the public of it.
“Mr. President, to make your talks with President Donald Trump easier, the Council of Ministers has adopted a position so that you know what to stick to in your conversations,”
Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski addressed the president on Tuesday.
Sikorski’s first statement had already sparked mixed reactions. This was because, as Marcin Przydacz, head of the Presidential Bureau of International Policy, pointed out, the government’s loud “instructions” amounted to barely a page and a half of A4 paper. “[…] It does not seem as though the government had very much to say,” Przydacz remarked at the time. The latest video message from Sikorski was in turn commented on by Paweł Szefernaker, Head of the President’s Office.
“A disgrace that we have such a politician”
“This is some kind of childishness,”
he said on Polsat News.
Szefernaker emphasised that “instead of sending documents that should be classified,” the Foreign Ministry had sent a one-page note by email.
“It is a disgrace for Poland that today we have such a politician, who, on the eve of President Nawrocki’s visit, is trying to conduct Polish foreign policy in this way,”
the politician stated yesterday.
Szefernaker also said that the president “is carrying out what he spoke about during the election campaign, and it is only natural that all of this is being done in the spirit of good relations and a new opening in relations with the United States.”
“This visit is meant above all to serve as a new opening in relations between the American and Polish administrations, because until now, as we know, over the last year and a half, the government has not had such relations,”
he said.