US supports permanent G20 membership for Poland

The United States has expressed “strong support” for Poland to become a permanent member of the G20 and has hailed the “strong and growing relationship” between Warsaw and Washington.

In December, the US invited Poland to attend this year’s G20 summit in Miami as a guest. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Poland was “assuming its rightful place” at the forum, which brings together 19 major countries as well as the European Union and the African Union.

However, Poland has also been pushing for permanent membership of the group, pointing to the fact that its economy is on the verge of becoming the 20th largest in the world (though membership of G20 is not decided purely on that basis).

On Thursday, following a “strategic dialogue” meeting in Warsaw between the US and Poland, the two countries issued a joint statement in which “the United States expressed its strong support for Poland’s accession to the G20 as a permanent member”.

The two sides also jointly “reaffirmed that the relationship is strong and growing” between them and pledged to maintain and deepen cooperation on security, defence, energy and securing supply chains, especially for critical minerals.

On energy, they discussed the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Poland receives most of its LNG from the US, and last year outlined plans to become a conduit for supplying American gas to neighbouring Ukraine and Slovakia.

In this week’s joint statement, the US said that it “supports Poland’s ambitions to become a regional LNG hub that will replace the historically vulnerable east-west dependency model with a diversified north-south system”.

The two countries also revealed that they had discussed US support for the development of civilian nuclear power in Poland.

American firms Westinghouse and Bechtel are the partners in building Poland’s first nuclear plant, and the US is also interested in helping develop a planned second plant.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast that Poland’s economy would surpass $1 trillion for the first time in 2025 and overtake Switzerland’s to become the 20th largest in the world.

However, updated IMF figures published in April show that Poland’s economy remained narrowly smaller than Switzerland’s last year, and is now forecast to overtake it only in 2028.

Speaking at a summit of G20 finance ministers in April, where Poland was present as an invited guest, finance minister Andrzej Domański said that the new IMF data make no difference to Warsaw’s ambition for full G20 membership.

“Argentina is a member of G20 [even though] it is the 25th largest economy in the world,” noted Domański, quoted by news website Gazeta.pl. “Due to its regional importance, it is a member of the G20.”

There are no specific criteria for a country to join the G20. The current members are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK, the US, the EU and the AU.

Last week, Domański argued that Poland deserves membership as it represents “the most successful economic transformation of the past 40 years”, having emerged from communism to become one of the world’s major economies, reports Euronews.

Poland has also taken on a growing security role given its proximity to Russia and Ukraine. It is now the largest relative defence spender in NATO, has the alliance’s largest army in Europe, and by 2030 will have more tanks than the UK, France, Germany and Italy combined.

In March, the US ambassador to Warsaw, Thomas Rose, hailed Poland as “Europe’s new great power”, an “ideal ally” for Washington, and a “model Europe must follow”.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.