Warsaw, Poland — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised on Friday to find ways to get 44 billion euros in defense loans from the European Union, after Poland’s president vetoed a law that would have allowed the country to access funds.
Poland is set to be the biggest beneficiary of SAFE, or Security Action for Europe, a 150 billion-euro EU loan program aimed at boosting Europe’s defense preparedness at a time when the US is reducing its role in the continent’s security.
But President Karol Nawrocki, who has identified herself as Tusk’s main opponent, said on Thursday she was vetoing legislation that would have allowed Poland to access EU defense loans.
“Poland is in shock,” Tusk said Friday. “People are wondering if this is betrayal, the work of lobbyists or a lack of common sense.”
Successive Polish governments have increased the country’s defense spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in 2022. But while Tusk’s liberal government wants to coordinate efforts with the European Union, the nationalist president has proven more euro-sceptic and has a friendly relationship with the Trump administration.
Nawrocki was skeptical of Poland’s participation in SAFE from the beginning, arguing that it would burden the Poles with debt and increase the country’s dependence on Germany.
On Tuesday, he proposed an alternative draft law suggesting national resources could be used instead of European loans to pay for more investments in defence. Tusk has dismissed that option as unrealistic.
Tusk said on Friday that the presidential veto would not prevent the Polish government from taking advantage of the defense fund, but “it will be more difficult, sometimes slower and it will take more effort to convince everyone involved in this project.”
The US has also been openly critical of SAFE.
“The United States is concerned about how EU defense initiatives such as the Safeguard Action for Europe (SAFE) and the European Defense Industry Program (EDIP) restrict market access for American companies,” US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder and US Ambassador to Europe Matthew Whitaker wrote in NATO POLI in February.
Such European programs “undermine collective protection” by limiting competition, stifling innovation and robbing U.S. companies of much-needed mandates, the two wrote.
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