Poland is planning to intensify cross-border cooperation with Ukraine, Vice-Marshal of the Sejm of Poland Marek Kuchciński has said.
"We would like to draw attention to cooperation between Poland and Ukraine, which is not developing sufficiently now. I mean cross-border cooperation," he told journalists at a meeting of the parliamentary Assembly of Ukraine and Poland in Yaremche, Ivano-Frankivsk region, on Saturday.
He noted that although Poland and Ukraine have 500 kilometers of joint border, cooperation is not as effective as on the Polish-German border.
"Before Poland's accession to the European Union, there were more than 50 checkpoints on the Polish-German border. Now the number of checkpoints with Ukraine is six times lower. We have to work in this area," Kuchciński said.
He also said that Poland and Ukraine were united by "history and joint avoidance of the mistakes that were made in our common history 70 years ago."
"We are the best of neighbors, and we know each other better than anyone else in Europe. French or Germans travel to Ukraine via Poland, while Poles and Ukrainians can directly communicate with each other," he said.
The Carpathians also unite border areas between the two countries, he added.
"We consider them in all dimensions – cultural, socio-cultural, ethnographic, metaphysical and environmental, in all aspects. These landscapes and these mountains have always attracted European citizens," he said.
