“The aim of our cooperation is to fight cross-border criminal networks and human trafficking, and to enhance the Sahel countries’ resilience to crises,” Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said during today’s video conference of the Coalition for the Sahel, organised by the European Union and the G5 Sahel group. The virtual meeting was attended by over 60 representatives of different countries and international organisations, including the United Nations and the African Union.

“During the pandemic, the EU must send a strong message of support for the Eastern Partnership states and the region,” said Minister Jacek Czaputowicz during the meeting of the EU and Eastern Partnership foreign ministers.

On 15 June, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jacek Czaputowicz will travel to Vilnius to take part in a meeting of heads of diplomacy of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia in the so-called B3+1 format.

This year, 2020, the Visegrad Group (V4) marks 20th anniversary of the foundation of the International Visegrad Fund with its seat in Bratislava, the most significant common organisation within the V4 framework. In hindsight, the successful operation of the International Visegrad Fund has proved both the viability of the Visegrad Group as a platform for sharing civic, cultural, scientific, educational and innovative concepts, and the benefit of the V4 as a space of mutual trust where thoughts, opinions and uncharted ideas can be exchanged and multiplicated in a truly frank and open “European” manner.

“Please feel invited for a virtual trip round our country with the new websites and the campaign. We want to encourage people abroad to get to know Poland and visit us once it is possible,” said Deputy Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk at a press briefing.

EU development cooperation ministers held today an informal discussion in the form of a video conference that focused on the implementation of the EU’s and its member states’ actions against Covid-19 in partner countries within the framework of the Team Europe strategy.

“It is with great pleasure and pride that I take part, as a representative of the Polish government, in the inauguration of the medical mission, commissioned by the WHO and organised by the Polish Centre for International Aid with the support of the Polish Army,” said Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Paweł Jabłoński, while seeing off a team of 23 doctors, nurses and paramedics of the Polish Centre for International Aid (PCPM), who are to launch their medical mission in Tajikistan. For the next three weeks, the Polish medics will share their knowledge and experience in the fight against COVID-19.

“Currently, the Coalition’s most important task is further stabilisation of Iraqi and Syrian territories set free from Daesh influence, taking into consideration the new challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Minister Jacek Czaputowicz on a Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh Small Group’s videoconference.

Poland supports its neighbours again in their fight against the COVID-19 epidemic. Today, another humanitarian aid convoy of over 40 trucks sets off to Belarus, carrying in total 300 tonnes of protective equipment and supplies. It is an unprecedented and the largest assistance that Poland has dispatched to the countries affected with the coronavirus pandemic.

“In times of crisis, the concepts of region and regional cooperation gain particular importance. We need this kind of cooperation, for instance, to re-establish international connections which have got interrupted due to the pandemic,” emphasised the chief of Polish diplomacy during talks with his Slovak counterpart in Bratislava.