Poland will be able to use profits from central bank gold and foreign exchange reserves instead of EU loans to boost military spending, according to a bill proposed by the president on Tuesday that drew a rebuke from Prime Minister Donald Tusk.<\/p>\n
Poland was the biggest beneficiary of the EU\u2019s 150-billion-euro Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, but the nationalist opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) labelled it a German plot to meddle in Polish affairs that would saddle Warsaw with debt and limit its flexibility regarding arms purchases.<\/p>\n
President Karol Nawrocki, an ally of PiS, has proposed a plan to use Polish funds instead of the European Union loans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe funds generated by the National Bank of Poland, resulting from the market valuation of Polish gold and currency reserves, are to be allocated directly to financing defence purposes through a newly established fund,\u201d according to Nawrocki\u2019s bill, which was submitted to parliament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Parliament, where Tusk\u2019s pro-European government has a majority, is unlikely to approve the bill, but the row highlights the deep divisions at the top of the Polish state.<\/p>\n
Tusk says the cheap financing provided by SAFE is essential to Poland\u2019s security in the face of what it views as a rising threat from Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis (presidential) bill has no money – it has a new body, a council, new bureaucracy, and dozens of unnecessary regulations,\u201d Tusk told reporters.<\/p>\n
Nawrocki has criticised the government\u2019s own bill, which creates a mechanism by which the 43.7 billion euros (HK$397.6 billion) made available to Poland under \u2018SAFE\u2019 would be disbursed. He has not yet said whether he will veto it.<\/p>\n
If Nawrocki does veto that bill, the government is preparing a \u201cplan B\u201d that would still allow Poland to access SAFE funds, Tusk said earlier on Tuesday, without elaborating.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poland will be able to use profits from central bank gold and foreign exchange reserves instead of EU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1593,747,64,1589,1009,1588,1595,1591,1590,1592,574,1594,192,1577,1587,1063],"class_list":{"0":"post-1786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-donald-tusk","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-donald-tusk","11":"tag-english-daily","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-free-newspaper","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-hong-kong-media","16":"tag-hong-kong-news","17":"tag-hong-kong-news-media","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-sing-tao","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-standard","22":"tag-the-standard","23":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}