Putting the EU on notice.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish officials are hailing an upcoming visit by Donald Trump, with Poland’s defense minister calling it a “huge success” for the government and another official celebrating the unexpectedness of a U.S. president stopping in Warsaw before Paris, London or Berlin.
Trump’s visit offers the promise of raising the standing of the government of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo as it finds itself increasingly marginalized within the European Union over a refusal to resettle refugees and migrants and over judicial changes that the EU says weaken the rule of law.
The White House said Friday that Trump will visit Poland on July 6 before he joins the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. It said the visit to Poland — where the U.S. recently deployed hundreds of troops — is meant to reaffirm Washington’s “steadfast commitment to one of our closest European allies.”
Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said late Sunday that the upcoming visit is a “huge success of Polish diplomacy” and an “enormous event showing how much Poland’s place in geopolitics and world politics has changed” since his party, Law and Justice, took power in 2015.
Krzysztof Szczerski, chief of staff to President Andrzej Duda, said Polish officials had worked “many months” to persuade Trump to visit.
“At first … it seemed impossible that we would be able to convince the U.S. president that he should visit Poland before the biggest European countries,” Szczerski told the wPolityce web portal Sunday.
HT: Daily Caller