Ukraine receives partner status in Three Seas Initiative

The countries participating in the Three Seas Initiative have created a new partnership format and given Ukraine a partner status

Polish President Andrzej Duda announced this during the Three Seas Summit in Riga on Monday, TVN 24 reports.

Unlike the strategic partnership that connects the countries of the Three Seas with the United States, Britain, or the European Commission, the new form of collaboration is addressed to potential EU member states.

"We have decided to create a unique, new type of partnership with the Three Seas Initiative with partnership through participation besides the strategic partnership. It is a new type of partnership designed not only for Ukraine.

We gave it to Ukraine today, but we assume that the same partnership can be shared by those countries in Central Europe and are not members of the European Union but seek to join it," Duda said.

The President of Poland added that the countries on the way to joining the European Union would be able to apply for such a format of partnership with the Three Seas Initiative.

Duda stressed that all the countries of the Three Seas supported Ukraine's official candidate status.

"I hope that the decision on this issue will be made by the European Council this week, at the end of the week, because then there will be a meeting of this council," said the Polish president.

Ukraine has repeatedly expressed a desire to join the Three Seas.

To recap, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, invited to participate in the Three Seas summit as a guest via video, said that Ukraine should become a full participant in the Three Seas Initiative.

The Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, stated that the Three Seas Initiative would be impossible without an independent Ukraine and hinted at the importance of Ukraine's involvement in this cooperation format.

Reference

In 2016, Polish President Duda and Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović founded the Three Seas Initiative as a platform for economic cooperation between the Central European countries of the EU.

It includes twelve states of the European Union, running along the north-south axis from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic and Black Seas, hence the name.