SAFE – Nationalist or European? Poland Debates How to Fund Defence

Polish elites disagree about how to fund defence. President Nawrocki’s domestic defence-funding alternative is built on an accounting trick, a flawed draft law and years of Central Bank losses – but its real purpose is to disengage Poland from the EU.

Yesterday Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki and Prime Minister Donald Tusk met at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw to discuss Poland’s access to the European Union’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence loan mechanism – a low-interest programme offering Poland up to 43.7 billion euros to finance defence modernisation over 45 years. No agreement was reached. Nawrocki maintained his ten-day window for signing or vetoing the government’s enabling bill and offered nothing to suggest the decision would be straightforward.

The government’s bill – Act on the Financial Instrument for Increasing Security SAFE – was approved by the Council of Ministers on 11 February 2026 and passed by the Sejm with Senate amendments on 26-27 February 2026. It establishes the Financial Instrument for Increasing Security (FIZB), managed by Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK, Poland’s key development bank), through which Poland would borrow at low interest rates with a ten-year grace period. Under the bill, 89 per cent of funds would be directed to Polish defence firms, with the remainder allocated to cyber security, border protection and critical infrastructure.