Polish President Andrzej Duda went on a tour of southern European countries to hold meetings with the leaders of the countries of the region and convince them to grant Ukraine the status of a candidate for membership in the European Union.
This is stated in a message on the official website of the Office of the President of Poland.
“From Wednesday, the President of the Republic of Poland begins a series of visits to Southern Europe - Portugal and Italy - in order to convince the leaders of these countries to support Ukraine's quick accession path to the EU,” reads the statement.
The President of Poland will visit Portugal and Italy this evening. Meetings with the President and Prime Minister of Portugal and the President of Italy are scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday in Braga, Lisbon and Rome.
Then Andrzej Duda will fly to Bucharest, where the summit of the leaders of the Bucharest Nine, NATO's eastern flank, gathers on Friday.
The head of the presidential International Policy Bureau, Jakub Kumoch, emphasized that the visit was part of the campaign for Ukraine announced by the Presidents of Poland and Slovakia during the recent meeting in Bratislava.
“Our countries, supported by Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, will persuade to grant Ukraine the status of a candidate,” Kumoch announced.
We will remind, on May 9, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine has filled out the second part of the questionnaire submitted by the European Union to assess the country's ability to obtain the status of a candidate for EU membership.
Later, the Head of State expressed hope for a positive response from the European Union to grant Ukraine candidate status at the end of June this year.
According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, the country needs exclusively the status of a candidate for EU membership, and not surrogate alternatives in any way.
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