FILE PHOTO: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk looks on during a press conference with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Warsaw, Poland, April 15, 2024. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo
WARSAW (Reuters) - The leaders of European Union countries agree that the bloc should help finance security measures on Poland's border with Belarus, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.
The border has been a flashpoint since migrants started flocking there in 2021. The EU accuses Belarus, a close Russian ally, of flying in migrants from the Middle East and sending them across the border illegally in an attempt to engineer a crisis, which Minsk denies.
Tusk said that European leaders he had spoken to at an informal summit in Brussels had agreed that protecting the EU's eastern border was a common task and that this also applied to financing.
"Today I can assure you - Europe is going to pay for our security, because our security on the border is Europe's security," he said.
Poland has said it plans to spend 10 billion zlotys ($2.5 billion) on strengthening its border with Belarus and has reintroduced a no-go zone along part of the frontier.
($1 = 4.0423 zlotys)
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Peter Graff)
