Tomorrow, on 21 December, the head of Polish diplomacy will pay a one-day visit to Budapest, where he will meet with the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, and the deputy foreign minister of Slovakia.

Held in Budapest on 21 December, the meeting was organised under the Hungarian presidency of the Visegrad Group. The focus was on the situation in Afghanistan, countering illegal migration, and the state of affairs in the Western Balkans. Also discussed were relations and cooperation between the EU and Turkey.

This year’s Amicus Oeconomiae award ceremony was held on 16 December and attended by Minister Zbigniew Rau. The ceremony was accompanied by a panel discussion on the Foreign Ministry’s activity in economic diplomacy.

The chief of Polish diplomacy received in Warsaw Ambassador Mikko Kinnunen, Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office in Ukraine and in the Trilateral Contact Group.

On 16 December 2021, Minister Zbigniew Rau presented a prize for the best master’s thesis on contemporary international relations. This year’s 33rd edition of the competition received 39 entries, of which seven were honoured with awards.

Poland strongly supports the territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova and appeals to de-facto administration in Tiraspol to refrain from any actions undermining it.

On 11 December 2021, at a meeting of the Lublin Triangle (L3) coordinators in Lutsk, the deputy foreign ministers discussed the current security issues in the region, paying special attention to the threat posed by the Russian Federation to Ukraine’s security as well as to the hybrid attack orchestrated by Lukashenko against Poland’s eastern border. The diplomats were unanimous in condemning the Russian Federation’s attempts to escalate regional crises in the security dimension. “The Lublin Triangle serves its fundamental purpose as a forum of day-to-day cooperation and coordination of positions on issues that are of key importance for the initiative’s three member states.

Poland sent 138,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to Laos. The donation is an expression of our solidarity and will to support the local healthcare system. In recent months, the pandemic situation in Laos has deteriorated sharply; at present, the country reports the highest numbers of infections since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new chief of German diplomacy arrived in Warsaw on a one-day visit. Minister Rau congratulated his German counterpart on assuming the office of foreign minister of the Federal Republic of Germany, and expressed his appreciation for it having been her third, following Paris and Brussels, foreign visit since taking on this post.