Lebanon: Joint declaration: Germany and Poland support upgrading of schools in Lebanon

Press re­lease of 22.06.2016 | Berlin – Every child in Lebanon, and that includes every refugee child, should be able to go to school. Ger­many and Poland will sup­port the Lebanese ed­u­ca­tion min­istry in achiev­ing this am­bi­tious goal. That was agreed be­tween BMZ State Sec­re­tary Friedrich Kitschelt and Un­der­sec­re­tary of State Joanna Wro­necka at to­day's Pol­ish-Ger­man gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tions.

The two coun­tries are thus fol­low­ing up on the agree­ments made by the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity at the Syria con­fer­ence in Lon­don in Feb­ru­ary. Poland will con­tribute three mil­lion eu­ros to the pro­ject and Ger­many, a to­tal of 10 mil­lion eu­ros. The Deut­sche Ge­sell­schaft für In­ter­na­tio­na­le Zu­sam­men­ar­beit (GIZ) will im­ple­ment the pro­ject in Lebanon.

An­other topic dur­ing the meet­ing be­tween State Sec­re­tary Kitschelt and Un­der­sec­re­tary of State Wro­necka was Pol­ish-Ger­man co­op­er­a­tion in Ukraine. In this en­deav­our, the two coun­tries are fo­cus­ing on de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion and mu­nic­i­pal part­ner­ships. Ex­perts from Ger­many and Poland help their Ukrain­ian col­leagues to im­prove lo­cal gov­ern­ment pro­ce­dures. "This can be­come a model Eu­ro­pean pro­ject," said State Sec­re­tary Kitschelt af­ter the meet­ing.

Pol­ish-Ger­man gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tions have been held reg­u­larly since 1991. This year, the Cab­i­nets of Poland and Ger­many also cel­e­brated an an­niver­sary: the Pol­ish-Ger­man Treaty on Good-Neigh­bourli­ness was signed 25 years ago.