President tells pope 'mutual respect' needed in EU
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
15.10.2018 13:37
The European Union needs to “return to mutual respect between countries”, Polish President Andrzej Duda said he told Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, on Monday.
Andrzej Duda, Pope Francis, and Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda. Photo: PAP/KPRP/Jakub Szymczuk
During a one-and-a-half-hour meeting with the pope at the Vatican, Duda said the pair discussed the European Union and “whether there was a chance for the bloc to get out of the crises in which it is immersed”.
Duda said this was possible but that the bloc “needs to return to the values from which [it] emerged”, naming “Judeo-Christian roots” as the values which shaped the European Union.
As well as mutual respect between countries, Duda said a need for “certain cultural differences” also needed to be respected.
Poland has in the past accused other members of the European Union of getting involved in Poland’s internal policies, be it its staunch anti-migration stance, its controversial court reforms which have seen Brussels launching a number of procedures against Warsaw, and most recently, the invitation to Berlin and Brussels of a woman whom Poland had expelled from the Schengen area. (vb/pk)