Joint Statement between the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Prime Minister of Poland
Source: gov.uk (2025-01-18)

This joint statement was released following the meeting between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw on 17 January 2025.

Joint Statement following the meeting of the British and Polish Prime Ministers in Warsaw on 17 January 2025.

We met in Warsaw to discuss our close partnership and shared vision for our bilateral and international cooperation.

Today we reaffirmed our unshakeable support for NATO. We discussed a broad range of shared global challenges, including how to shore up European security in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia. We agreed to continue joint support to Ukraine, including military support, training and reconstruction. Together we will work to tackle Russia’s hybrid attacks, including in cyberspace, take joint action to counter information manipulation, and deepen collaboration on extending sanctions against Putin’s regime. We are committed to holding Russia accountable for the crimes and damages perpetrated on Ukrainian territory.

We welcomed the start of the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of this year and discussed the Presidency’s priorities for the next six months. Together, we underlined the importance of a close partnership between the UK and the EU, including in the security and economic spheres. We looked forward to the UK joining the informal European Council meeting in February.

Here in Warsaw, we agreed to launch negotiations on a new Defence and Security Treaty between the UK and Poland. Building on the 2017 Defence Treaty, the new agreement will provide the framework and ambition for the deepest cooperation across the full range of external and internal security threats, and our shared determination to defend and promote peace and security in Europe together with our allies.

We expressed our strong support for the important and growing defence industrial relationship between the UK and Poland. A new Polish-British Joint Programme Office in the UK, planned to be established in the middle of this year, will give strong support to this work. It will focus on the £4bn bilateral agreement for the next generation of the short range air defence system NAREW. We also discussed Poland’s East Shield project to further strengthen its border, and the UK’s support to the project.

Together we underlined the imperative of tackling irregular migration, and agreed to establish a strategic border security and migration dialogue, to focus initially on tackling the threat from migrant smuggling networks and increased data sharing. We discussed the risks to Poland’s borders of the instrumentalisation of migrants through Belarus and Russia, and agreed to share best practice to address this challenge. We expressed our support for the role of sanctions as one of the tools for tackling irregular migration and organised immigration crime.

We celebrated our close trade and investment relationship, with growing bilateral trade, creating jobs and growth for the people of both countries. We agreed our governments would deepen bilateral dialogue on energy security and transition. We also agreed to explore a new forum between relevant ministers to address the shared challenges and opportunities, to be announced in the coming months.

The friendship between our countries lies in our close people to people links. We recognised the breadth of our cooperation, including co-operation on science and education. Looking ahead to 2025, we underlined the value of UK-Poland cultural co-operation, and looked forward to the UK-Poland Season of Culture 2025.