President Miloš Zeman will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda next week at Prague Castle. According to President’s spokesman Jiří Ovčáček, they will discuss European Union issues and the Visegrad Group cooperation.
The director of the Foreign Department of Prague Castle, Rudolf Jindrák, told Czech News Agency that the meeting would take place at the request of Poland. “The Polish side wants to consult on current issues concerning the European Union and the Polish presidency of the Visegrad Group,” he said. According to Jindrák, specific topics are still being negotiated, but it is assumed there will be a discussion of the European and Visegrad agendas, and there could also be an opportunity to discuss bilateral issues.
Poland now chairs the Visegrad countries. The presidents could thus talk, for example, about the summit of V4 heads of state, which was to take place this autumn. Due to the pandemic, it was postponed to the beginning of next year and may now take place in February or March.
Duda will only meet with Zeman in the Czech Republic, and, according to Jindrák, it will be a working visit, thus, it will not be accompanied by official military honors. The meeting could take about an hour and a half.
This is the first time Zeman will meet with the Polish president after his summer re-election . In July, he wrote in a congratulatory letter that he believed in the development of Czech-Polish cooperation on an international level. They met several times during Duda’s previous term and were last seen in November 2019 in Berlin celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. In October 2019, Duda also attended a meeting of the V4 presidents at the Lány Chateau.
Title image: Czech Republic President Milos Zeman, left, and his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda watch a military band parade during a welcoming ceremony, in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, May 10, 2018, at the start of his official visit to Poland. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)
