This story is a part of the weekly newsletter about economy, defence, and tech in the eastern flank of Nato, How we cee it.
The European programme for rearmament through cheap loans (SAFE) has become the most explosive political topic in Poland.
The country secured the largest allocation under the EU’s new Security Action for Europe (SAFE) rearmament loan programme, €44bn, but the president, Karol Nawrocki, moved to veto the law underpinning its financing last Thursday (12 March).
The European Union introduced the SAFE programme to provide member states with financial support to accelerate defence readiness through urgent, large-scale investment.
Poland secured the largest allocation under the programme, and wanted to finance 139 projects, ranging from air defence and cyber operations to the production of heavy equipment. The Polish parliament approved the programme’s implementation in late February.
Within weeks, however, SAFE in Poland had become a political dispute more dramatic than anything it had triggered elsewhere in Europe.
After a weeks-long standoff between prime minister Donald Tusk’s government and president Nawrocki (who is aligned with the current opposition), vetoed the legislation that would have created a financial instrument to support the new military loans.
The conflict has come as a surprise in a country that, over the past decade, has built a reputation for massive defence investment regardless of which party holds power, even amid deep political division.
Last year, Poland spent an estimated 4.5 percent of GDP on its military — the highest share in Nato alongside Lithuania — and it aims to reach five percent.
One of Nawrocki’s central objections to SAFE is that, under EU rules, at least 65 percent of contracts must go to European suppliers. In practice, this means Poland would be required in some cases to favour German or French defence firms over American ones.
That is a politically sensitive position in a country with deep, long-standing ties to the United States. While the Tusk government has broadly pushed for greater strategic independence from Washington, the president has sought to cultivate the closest possible relationship with the Trump administration.
Assurances from the government and Poland’s SAFE commissioner, Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, that the programme does not preclude purchases from outside Europe have failed to convince the opposition. Nor has the fact that more than 80 percent of the funds would flow to Polish companies.
Instead, Nawrocki put forward an alternative: using returns from Poland’s 550-tonne gold reserves, held by the national bank, to finance defence investments. The central bank governor, Adam Glapiński, backed the proposal, but the government and several analysts dismissed it as unrealistic.
Nawrocki also argued that the deal will allow Brussels to exert undue pressure on Warsaw through monitoring how funds will be allocated.
Some analysts believe the true motivation behind the veto is Nawrocki’s desire to deny the ruling coalition any political points ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.
If so, the gamble does not appear to be paying off yet. A United Surveys poll for Wirtualna Polska published on Monday (16 March) found that 51.9 percent of respondents viewed the president’s decision negatively, while 40.1 percent viewed it positively. A poll published the same day by IBRiS for Polsat News showed 56.9 percent of respondents were critical of the veto, against 33.8 percent who supported it. A third survey, published by Rzeczpospolita on 18 March, asked whether the government should proceed with SAFE regardless of the presidential veto: 47.1 percent said yes, 43.9 percent said no, and nine percent had no opinion.
The Tusk government responded to the veto with predictable fury.
Foreign minister Radosław Sikorski was particularly sharp, describing the veto as “national treason.” Tusk declared that all of Europe was “astonished by what happened and how it was possible,” adding that “only Russian newspapers will find understanding for the president’s veto.”
The ruling coalition does not have enough votes in parliament to override Nawrocki’s veto. That does not, however, necessarily mean Poland will lose access to the loans entirely.
After Nawrocki refused to sign the SAFE Financial Instrument Act, the government announced it would press ahead with the programme anyway. The opposition countered that doing so would be unconstitutional, and that the prime minister and members of the cabinet could face prosecution before the State Tribunal.
Proceeding without the legislation would mean less flexible access to the funds — the government would, for instance, be unable to use them to finance the border guard, modernise the police, or fund infrastructure construction.
The European Commission, for its part, stated that while this was “not the expected scenario,” it remained ready to work with Warsaw.
In light of these recent developments in Poland, a new piece of information relating to the SAFE programme lands as a paradox.
While Poland will have to use backroom manoeuvres to access EU loans for defence due to its political infighting, Hungary — which had a portion of its EU funds frozen under the conditionality mechanism for violating the rule of law — will be free to access €16bn under SAFE.
‘Narva Republic’ memes about Estonia splitting up seems familiar ploy
Over the past month, social media accounts have popped up promoting the idea of separating Narva and Ida-Viru County (a city and region in the extreme east of Estona, bordering Russia) from Estonia and creating a so-called Narva People’s Republic, according to the findings of Popastop, a volunteer-run anti-propaganda blog in Estonia.
“At first glance, the content appears to be a mixture of internet memes, cat pictures, and provocative jokes. A closer look, however, reveals a clear narrative in which Narva is portrayed as a separate political entity and the idea of establishing a so-called Narva People’s Republic is promoted,“ the blog wrote.
Marta Tuul, a representative of the Internal Security Service, told the outlet Delfi there is reason to believe this is an information operation aimed at sowing confusion and undermining social cohesion.
“Such tactics have been used before, both in Estonia and in other countries. It is a simple and cheap method to provoke and intimidate society,” she said.
As the Ukrainian outlet United24 wrote, the information campaign bears resemblance to the messaging that preceded Russia’s intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when Moscow-backed actors proclaimed so-called “people’s republics” in several regions.
At the time, Russian intelligence operatives and local collaborators declared separatist entities across several Russian-speaking areas of the country. Of those, only the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” ultimately took hold, after direct Russian military involvement and months of fighting.
Due to its location, Narva has become a sensitive topic in European security discussions, as concerns have mounted that Russia could eventually attempt to attack this piece of Estonian territory in an escalation against Nato.
The “Is Narva Next?” question has helped draw attention to Russia’s ambitions to conquer more territory in Europe beyond Ukraine — but according to experts and military officials in Estonia we spoke to in January, fears of an imminent threat have been overblown.
“We have always perceived Russia as a threat — we have historical experience with it, and we lived through nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation. We cannot feel safe living next to it. But that does not mean we would expect war today or tomorrow,” said Major Taavi Karotamm, spokesperson for the Estonian military.
As long as the war in Ukraine continues, he argued, there is no immediate threat of a full-scale war in Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, because Russia’s forces are tied down there.
Spy scandal stirs Slovenian election campaign ahead of parliamentary vote
As Slovenians inch toward parliamentary elections on Sunday, reports reveal the potential involvement of Black Cube, Israel’s largest private intelligence agency.
The report, published Monday by Inštitut 8. Marec, a leading progressive nonprofit, together with investigative journalist Borut Mekina from the outlet Mladina, says that on 22 December 2025, Dan Zorella, the intelligence firm’s founder, and retired Israel Defence Forces major general Giora Eiland, who serves as its adviser, landed at Ljubljana airport.
According to the article, the two representatives then met with Janez Janša, whose opposition party SDS is currently leading the polls ahead of the elections.
Janša’s SDS could represent a Slovenian shift in the Middle East policy, leaning towards bigger support of Israel. The liberal Freedom Movement party of incumbent prime minister Robert Golob has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinians — under his government, Slovenia recognised an independent Palestinian state and last year introduced a ban on imports of goods produced in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency confirmed on Monday that Black Cube representatives had arrived in December, but said it could not confirm they met with Janša, the leader of the opposition SDS party.
Black Cube, the private intelligence firm founded in 2010, presents itself as an organisation that gathers evidence for international legal disputes. As Mladina reports, however, it has carried out some of the most controversial intelligence operations on record.
Among them was a campaign on behalf of film producer Harvey Weinstein. Operatives using false identities followed women who had accused him of sexual harassment and filmed them to discredit them as witnesses in criminal proceedings; they also followed journalists and representatives of the women who had been harassed.
The company was also implicated in Hungary’s April 2022 elections. Using a network of fake LinkedIn profiles and job offers conducted via video calls, it lured at least 12 journalists and activists who had criticised prime minister Viktor Orbán; the resulting recordings subsequently appeared in pro-Orbán media ahead of the election, Mladina writes. The company’s involvement was later confirmed by LinkedIn, which in November 2022 attributed the operation directly to Black Cube.
Developments ahead of the Slovenian elections bear a striking resemblance to that scenario. Just 10 days before the vote, covertly recorded videos of prominent individuals appeared online, published on a website called anti-corruption2026.com — a site that lists no owners, editor, or contact information. As Mladina reports, the site is in English rather than Slovenian, and features recordings secretly made during business meetings.