Thuringia's Prime Minister Ramelow is President of the Bundesrat this year. In this office he recently traveled to the Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma in Auschwitz, but also to Belgium and Romania. Now he is visiting Poland again.
Erfurt/Warsaw (dpa/th) - Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) is traveling abroad again as President of the Bundesrat. He began a three-day visit to Poland on Wednesday. The State Chancellery said the main focus was on the consequences of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and bilateral parliamentary contacts. But the Thuringian partnership with the Polish region of Malopolska, which has existed since 1997 and thus 25 years, is also a topic of the visit.
It is a matter close to his heart to come to Warsaw and Kraków, said Ramelow. Poland is much more directly affected than Germany by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. The result is an impending energy crisis of enormous proportions, inflation and skyrocketing prices. "We have to talk about this as European partners. We have to do everything we can to ensure that the European house does not become brittle," said the left-wing politician. He is happy about the exchange. "We need new ideas and impulses, new concepts in order to master the current serious challenges. The trip should contribute to this."
According to the State Chancellery, Ramelow was invited by the President of the second chamber of Parliament, Senate Marshal Tomasz Grodzki. Talks are also planned with other parliamentary representatives. Ramelow will lay wreaths in several places in memory of the victims of German crimes in Poland during World War II.
Thuringia and its partner region, Malopolska, "have made a significant contribution to the development of German-Polish relations," said Ramelow. "We now meet at eye level and with a matter of course that could not have been foreseen 25 years ago." Among other things, Ramelow referred to 35 Thuringian-Polish school partnerships - ten of them with schools in Malopolska. In order to create lasting mutual understanding, it couldn't start soon enough.
