Poland’s Conservative Opposition Has Good Reason To Reject A Gigantic EU Loan For Arms

The terms would erode Poland’s already limited sovereignty and risk reversing the gains that it’s made vis-à-vis Germany with respect to their regional rivalry.

Euractiv reported that “Poland’s participation in the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence loan programme may be under threat due to a political dispute”, which followed Remix News’ report about how “The Polish right fears EU’s €40 billion armament loan comes with dangerous strings attached”. Politico was the first to report about this in their article about how “EU loans-for-weapons SAFE scheme gets political in Poland”. The issue now dominates the political-security discourse in Poland.

What’s most controversial about Poland’s SAFE funds is that they could be frozen on the pretext of Poland violating EU law, just as other funds were when the opposition ruled, and 65% of them must be spent on EU-manufactured equipment. That said, “Law & Justice” (PiS) might return to power after fall 2027’s next Sejm elections, and its grey cardinal Jaroslaw Kaczynski was cited by Euractiv as warning that “[SAFE is] part of a broader political plan aimed at uniting Europe under German leadership.”

It’s for this reason that he called upon President Karol Nawrocki, who’s an independent allied with PiS, to veto the Sejm’s promulgation of a law for implementing SAFE. Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz insisted that the remaining 35% of non-EU-mandated military-technical purchases can come from the US, Poland’s top military partner by far, but that still means that two-thirds of purchases must be European (in practice likely German) and the funds can be frozen on arbitrary legal pretexts.

For background, “Poland’s Military-Industrial Complex Is Embarrassingly Underdeveloped” since it struggles to even produce shells, which is why domestic producers aren’t expected to benefit from SAFE. Meanwhile, a recent article from the Washington Post basically argued that “Poland’s Military Build-Up Might Have Ultimately Been For Nothing”, the basis being that the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of conventional arms that it purchased over the past decade have been rendered null by drones.

Another relevant point is that “Germany Is Competing With Poland To Lead Russia’s Containment”, and if it gets Poland to reorient its military-technical purchases away from the US and South Korea towards German companies instead through SAFE, then Germany would gain the upper hand over Poland. In connection with that, Germany’s “two-speed Europe” proposal and the related one of fast-tracking Ukraine’s EU membership aim to advance the federalization of Europe, which PiS fervently opposes.

The larger trend is that “The EU’s Planned Transformation Into A Military Union Is A Federalist Power Play”, and this could become a fait accompli if two-thirds of Poland’s EU-allocated €40 billion low-cost loans go towards German-produced military-technical equipment. After all, that sum (€26 billion) is over half of Poland’s 2026 defense expenditures (€46 billion), which could therefore result in the radical reorientation of its armed forces towards its neighbor’s wares. The strategic implications are obvious.

Poland’s conservative opposition accordingly has good reason to reject this gigantic EU loan since the terms would erode its already limited sovereignty and risk reversing the gains that it’s made vis-à-vis Germany with respect to their regional rivalry. Liberal-globalist Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed that Nawrocki’s veto of the law for implementing SAFE would be a “betrayal of national interests”, but since Nawrocki’s ally Kaczynski believes that Tusk is a “German agent”, Nawrocki might thus not be deterred.