The Congress of the European People's Party has officially started in the Polish capital.

It is host to a number of prominent European leaders and some 17 hundred delegates.

Opening the gathering Polish PM Donald Tusk recalled the words of the late John Paul II from the first pilgrimage to his homeland that there can be no Poland, nor Europe, without a return to fundamental values such as individual freedom or the right to private property: “The present crisis cannot be compared to the experiences of Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Latvians or Lithuanians in the 60s, 70s and 80s. That was a total crisis! What these nations, now described as a New Europe, believed in was that the best way of extricating oneself from this permanent crisis would be a return to these fundamental values.”
 
Luc Vandeputte, Deputy Secretary General of the EPP, says the discussions will focus on five major topics: “Fighting climate change, how do we cope with demographic change with the aging of the population, how do we cope with the financial crisis, what is the role of Europe in the world and how do we cope with security and terrorism.”

The Warsaw Congress is the party’s biggest gathering in history and one of the most costly events to date, Luc Vandeputte admited. The official cost of the EPP Congress in Warsaw is said to be half a million euro, the money coming entirely from the European People's Party funds.

SS