President Duda: we want NATO pipelines to reach further east

Poland wants NATO to discuss extending its Cold War era oil pipeline system further east, President Andrzej Duda said on Monday before leaving for Vilnius for a NATO summit that will start on Tuesday.

"We will certainly raise the issue of the expansion of fuel supply pipelines, NATO pipelines. Today they end in Germany because they are the remnants of what was built during the Cold War," Duda told reporters.

"We would like, after more than 20 years of our presence in NATO, for the alliance to finally decide that it will finance, that NATO countries will finance their expansion, so that they reach NATO's eastern flank."

NATO's Central Europe Pipeline System (CEPS) is a high-pressure pipeline network that transports jet fuel, gasoline, diesel fuel and naphtha across Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg and the Netherlands.

The NATO summit in Vilnius will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday (July 11 and 12). According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO-Ukraine Council would be launched among other things.

"This is the very moment we have been waiting for - we may openly say - for months, and for which we have been preparing for quite some time. In a moment we will board our plane and fly to Vilnius to begin the NATO summit tomorrow - a very important, second NATO summit during the ongoing war in Ukraine," president Duda said.

He added he hoped "it would be a decision-making summit in many aspects". "Denifinitely at least a few very important issues will be discussed there, virtually all of them crucial in terms of our security."

"It's obvious the danger has been clearly and firmly defined by NATO as a Russian threat, and therefore, if danger occurs, each NATO country is tasked to name concrete units that will be relocated then. It is to be a total of 300,000 soldiers who will strengthen the eastern flank in case an attack happens," Andrzej Duda explained.