Poland to enhance co-op with China

Visiting Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Thursday that good use must be made of the newly established strategic partnership between China and Poland to achieve better development for both countries. 

The two countries should think about ways to use their strategic partnership as a tool for their modernization, the minister said in an opening speech at a roundtable.

Both countries need to enter the next phase of the modernization process and move up the value chain, said Sikorski, adding that the two can benefit from each other's experience in fields including regulatory structures, urbanization and local government reform.

The minister also proposed setting up a Sino-Polish intergovernmental committee to further promote bilateral cooperation in various areas, saying the mechanism had the potential to become one of the most significant communication channels between the governments and entrepreneurs from both countries.

Poland now holds the rotating chair of the Visegrad countries — also known as V4 countries — in Central Europe, which aside from Poland includes the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.

Poland was the only one of all the European Union economies to avoid recession after the global financial crisis of 2008-09, and one of the fastest-growing since then. Several other countries in the EU are engulfed in sovereign debt crises. 

However, Poland's economy is decelerating at a faster pace than expected, according to the Polish national statistics office, with only a 2.4 percent GDP growth in the second quarter — its central bank, economy ministry and analysts had forecast a 2.9 percent growth.

The minister is confident in his country and Europe, saying that the euro has maintained a strong position in the international currency markets and Europe is the powerhouse of human resources. .

"Given that the economy is based on knowledge, Europe has pretty good prospects for the future," the minister said. European public debt has remained below that of the United States or Japan, he added.