Europe of the free and equal. Today Poland stands on the side of countries that respect the desire for their own freedom and the freedom of others. For whom independence is a value. Such a Europe will be a safe home for all of us. United not only economically, safe in its unity, willingness to cooperate and understanding of mutual needs.

There could hardly be a more eloquent symbol today of what freedom and democracy mean to us. The 3rd Summit of Speakers of Central and Eastern European Parliaments will take place in the Sejm and Senate immediately prior to the National Assembly on the occasion of the 550th anniversary of parliamentarianism.

This is an excellent opportunity to show how for over half a thousand years our ancestors, inhabitants of the lands on the banks of the Vistula, the Niemen, the Dvina and the Dnieper struggled for their parliament to make laws, to be respected and independent from external pressures.

In his "Stanza o wolności" ("Stanza on Freedom"), Kazimierz Wierzyński wrote that "We need freedom as we need adventure (...) The movement of change, the movement of duration, the system in the system. Like God, which is divine, we need freedom. Freedom given to man to populate the earth.

We are a nation of romantics. For centuries we have dreamed of being free with the free. We fought to be free with the free. Now we are free and equal with other countries. Strong with our independence. But over these centuries we have also learned the importance of alliances. We have experienced many of them. Alliances, enemies who pushed us into the arms of totalitarian occupants. Alliances as wise as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Alliances imposed by Soviet bayonets. For us, this history is alive, and the parliamentarians have a great responsibility to build now honest alliances that give us a sense of security and community.

Such a great project in which we participate is the European Union. It is an extremely important alliance. However, we do not want to close ourselves off from cooperation with other countries on levels understood as a community of interests and values. This strategic partnership for the exchange of ideas is what we are creating together here, together with the Presidents of the Central and Eastern European Parliaments.

We believe that it is worth talking, worth uniting and defending common interests. Strengthening parliamentary cooperation is a chance for the development of the region, especially in the field of energy and transport policy. It is also difficult to overestimate the role of parliamentary diplomacy in international politics, the creation of sustainable development, regional cooperation and migration policy.

Today in the European Union there are voices talking about different speeds of development, about building blocks that exclude other countries from the discussion. We prefer to talk about expanding cooperation, not narrowing it. A good example is the Tri-City project, which is pro-development and pro-investment. 12 countries located between the Adriatic Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea constitute about 1/3 of the entire territory of the European Union and 22% of its population. Meanwhile, it is still only about 10 percent of the Community GDP. We say openly that we want to change it by implementing specific cross-border projects, such as Via Carpatia. From the parliamentary perspective, the Tri-City should also include countries outside the EU.

Poland, together with the Visegrad Group countries, strongly defended its right to self-determination on the refugee issue. It took hundreds of meetings and thousands of hours of talks for the EU to finally take our common opinion into account, accepting it as its own and revising its migration policy.

So our voice is heard when we stand together. Our rights are respected when we loudly explain why we care about them. Poland is a free country and we feel safe around other free, sovereign states. We see alliances as an expression of equality of all partners. Only the free with the free can change Europe. Only equals with equals can safely shape their political destiny.

Marek Kuchciński, Speaker of the Sejm