WARSAW, Poland — Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced he will veto a bill to implement the European Union’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme which foresees around €43.7 billion ($50.3 billion) in low-cost loans for Poland’s military.
The development represents the latest tit-for-tat move in right-wing Nawrocki’s ongoing row with the centrist government that says it will absorb the loans for defense acquisitions anyway.
In a televised speech aired on March 12, the president said legislation passed by the Polish parliament about utilizing the loan “threatens our sovereignty, independence, or economic and military security.”
“SAFE is a mechanism through which Brussels can withhold funding at will, based on the so–called principle of conditionality, and our country will still have to pay this debt,” Nawrocki said.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose government has championed the loan program, has stated that more than 80% of the funds will be injected into Poland’s defense industry. Focus is to be placed on acquisitions of innovative gear such as unmanned technologies, anti-drone systems, satellites and cyber warfare equipment.
In anticipation of Nawrocki’s veto, Polish government officials have signaled the president’s opposition to SAFE could be overridden by incorporating the loans into an existing fund that is currently used to finance military acquisitions. As the ruling coalition does not have the necessary majority in the parliament to reject the veto, the Cabinet will need to use alternative means to tap into the loans.
“It’s a bad and dangerous decision,” Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the deputy prime minister and national defense minister, replied in a video posted on his social media profiles. “The point of the SAFE program is to modernize the Polish military whose procurement needs, equipment needs have been identified by the leading experts from the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces.”
Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.
