At a joint press conference in Warsaw, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk had discussed a new security and defense treaty with the hope of signing it this year, BNR reported.
Keir Starmer said the treaty would include "deepening ties" between the two nations' defense industries. He noted that a £4 billion partnership had been agreed for new air defence systems in Poland.
Asked whether recent meetings with other European nations were about a European army, Starmer denied that was the case, instead saying that they were about talks on issues such as strengthening defence deals and tackling criminal groups.
For his part, Donald Tusk stressed that after Brexit, "maximum convergence between the UK and the EU is needed, including on security and defence". Tusk added that he hoped the Polish-British security and defence pact would be ratified this year.
Starmer also touched on the issue of migration, saying that Belarusian and Russian gangs were "smuggling migrants" across the border to Poland and the UK will help "break up these gangs that operate across Europe".
Donald Tusk added that combating illegal migration "is not about slogans, words, xenophobia", but about "a set of concrete solutions".
Earlier, Keir Starmer visited the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, or Auschwitz, as it is called in German, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the site, which is considered a symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust, on January 27.
After his visits to Kiev and Warsaw, Starmer said in an interview with the „Financial Times" that he could strike a trade deal with Donald Trump and avoid punitive tariffs on the UK by rejecting Elon Musk's sharp criticism of his leadership as “side note“, BNR reported.
Keir Starmer insisted that Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday will not increase his political problems, saying the two have a “constructive“ relationship that will survive the statements of the future president's ally Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who accused him of leading a “tyrannical“ government.
“What matters to me is my relationship with the US and my relationship with President-elect Trump. Ultimately, my experience is that you have to focus on what matters,” Starmer added.
The British prime minister said tariffs were in no one’s interest and his government’s ambition is to get some kind of trade deal with the US, that’s the main thing. Starmer dismissed as a “false choice” the suggestion that he would have to choose between a deal with Trump or a better trade deal with the EU.
A trade deal between the UK and the US has been the dream of successive British prime ministers since Brexit, but it has never materialised.
The timing of Starmer’s visit to Kiev – days before Trump’s inauguration – was a symbolic show of the UK’s continued support for Volodymyr Zelensky, who signed a “100-year partnership” between the two countries. But it was also an opportunity for the British prime minister to show Trump that Britain was ready to join France and other European allies, possibly by deploying peacekeeping forces on the ground, if Ukraine agreed to end its war with Russia, commented the “Financial Times“.