“Tracing the ‘space’ of the united Europe, proposing new forms of civil participation to the Europeans, and questioning Europe’s role in the world”: these are “the main questions that need to be tackled today”, according to the President of the Republic of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski. In Rome for a state visit, the Polish President had a meeting with the Pope, and on 27 February gave an address on “Europe united in the 21st century”, in the presence of the President of the Italian Republic. “For a long time he recalled unification was the privilege of the free nations who lived to the West of the ‘Iron Curtain’. We, who were imprisoned on the opposite side, experienced a sense of amputation, of the loss of something that nonetheless belonged to us, for we too had contributed to its creation”. Then, finally, “with ‘Solidarnosc’ came the beginning of the transformation”, and now the rigorous effort to adapt our economy to the European parameters. “Following the enlargement of the Union in two years’ time continued the Polish President, referring to the probable entry of his own country and the first group of other candidates into the EU by 2004 , the area of united Europe will coincide in good measure with its geographical extension”, but “it is difficult to say today whether and for how long the frontier of the Union will run along the eastern frontiers of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Baltic States”. In Kwasniewski’s view, one thing is certain: “The EU cannot turn its back on the rest of the continent” but “must sustain the democratic and economic transformations taking place in the countries situated outside its frontiers”. Russia and the Ukraine pose the greatest challenges: after the period of freeze in relations with Russia due to Poland’s entry into NATO and the recent rapprochement promoted by Putin, “the chance offered by the pro-Western option of the Kremlin’s current policy must not be squandered warned Kwasniewski , nor even the similar opening of the Ukraine to Europe”. A further objective must be the beginning “of the dialogue with Belarus, to help her to overcome her isolation and, at the same time, stimulate the growth of her democracy and civil society”. This is a “dimension of the future EU in which Poland intends to play a significant role”. But “stability in the region of the Balkans”, dialogue with the Islamic world, and the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity are also prime objectives for “a Europe able to speak with only one voice and create instruments of common action, solidarity and lasting peace for the world”.
