Pelosi Remarks Before Meeting with President Jerzy Buzek of the European Parliament

WASHINGTON, April 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a brief press availability this morning with President Jerzy Buzek of the European Parliament prior to their meeting in the Capitol. Below is a transcript of the press availability:

Speaker Pelosi. Good morning. I am especially pleased to welcome the President of the European Parliament, President Buzek to the Capitol of the United States.

In doing so, I welcome him as a friend and as a person who has admired his leadership when he was Prime Minister of Poland and have worked with him already in Copenhagen on climate change and in meetings with the heads of Parliament of the G8 countries plus the European Union.

Before we begin our discussion in my office, I want to extend the condolences of the Members of Congress and the people of the United States to President Buzek on the terrible tragedy of loss of your President, his wife, and so many Polish leaders. On that occasion, we had a resolution on the floor of the House of Representatives. We all paid our respects to the Ambassador, and not only the respects of Congress, but also of the American people.

Our country is blessed with many Polish Americans. I have nieces in my family, nieces and grand nieces, and we know the vitality and the special spirit of that community brings to our country all across America. And they all mourned, as did all Americans, the loss of your President and First Lady and other leaders.

In the spirit of that friendship, I look forward to continuing our conversation on how we can protect our people, grow our economies, work together to meet the climate change crisis, to pay our respects to you for your tremendous leadership—whether it is promoting democracy and human rights or addressing the issues of economic and international and global security, as again we meet the climate crisis. So we have a full agenda to discuss.

But first and foremost, I want President Buzek to know how absolutely delighted I am to welcome him here to the Capitol, how much respect I have for his leadership and how grateful we are that he is here.

Thank you, Mr. President.

President Buzek. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the invitation, the possibility to meet you at the American Congress. And I think there are very supportive words of sympathy and all the support, which is coming to my country of the last weeks, and we feel that we are in community of countries which feel the same way. It is very supportive in such a tragic and difficult days.

Fortunately, our democracy is working. Our institutions are working, also procedure, which is so important in democracy. And we have friends, not only in the European Union, but which is very important, the United States.

We have a lot of things in front of us. We are after Lisbon Treaty implementation, very important.

Speaker Pelosi. Congratulations.

President Buzek. Yeah, it was not so easy because we changed war in our continent to constant negotiations. Some say it could be boring. But it is better in negotiations, which is boring, than the war which is so horrible and worst during first half of the 20th century.

Maybe sometimes it is not understand, how does it work? The European Union. I can only say that we have European Parliament directly elected. Having more or less the same responsibility for everything that is happening in the European Union, like American Congress having responsibility of everything that is happening in the United States. So it is a big similarity today. Our cooperation is of course, quite obvious. Because, first of all, we have the same basis, values, the same thinking, about the future of the world, and the same heritage, so many links between us, being natural friends. But I think we don't understand each other very often. So our contacts are necessary.

I will give under two short examples. In climate issue, Europe is a leader and we would like to save our planet, because we think it is very dangerous. And Americans are not very helpful. Second issue, global stability, non-proliferation or problems with Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and Americans are saying, "Europe is not very supportive." Would like to go with us. Probably we have the same tasks, but we don't understand very deeply each other. So we need cooperation first of all, on the level of legislators because it is easier to have comities. We can exchange staff. We can have joint visits to third countries. And we can also have in the future our assembly, Parliamentaria Transatlantic, Parliamentaria Assembly not only transatlantic legislators dialogue, or special delegations, so everything is in front of us. There are so many important issues.

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome.

President Buzek. Thank you.

SOURCE Office of the Speaker of the House