WARSAW, May 8 (Reuters) – Poland has signed its loan agreement under a European Union defence financing programme, securing 43.7 \u200cbillion euros to strengthen its military as the bloc steps \u200cup efforts to boost security amid heightened geopolitical risks.<\/p>\n
The deal makes Poland the first \u200bEU country to tap the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, which is aimed at boosting the EU’s defence capabilities and buying weaponry to counter potential threats from Russia or Belarus.<\/p>\n
“This is a turning point in \u200cthe history of Poland \u2060and the European Union,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said during the signing ceremony on Friday.<\/p>\n
“…This is a \u2060gigantic sum that will be invested directly in Polish security, the Polish arms industry, Polish companies that cooperate with the arms industry, and in \u200bour technological \u200bcapabilities.”<\/p>\n
Poland’s government pushed ahead with \u200bthe SAFE programme despite a \u200cveto by the country’s nationalist president, highlighting a deepening dispute over debt and the role Brussels should play in the security of the politically divided country.<\/p>\n
Poland is the biggest beneficiary of the 150-billion-euro SAFE initiative, but the veto meant the government had to fall back \u200con an existing armed forces fund, \u200bpreventing it from releasing about 7 billion \u200bzlotys previously earmarked for the \u200bborder guard and police.<\/p>\n
Poland has emerged as Europe’s \u200ctop defence spender by share of \u200bnational wealth as \u200bmeasured by gross domestic product, and plans to spend 4.8% of GDP on defence in 2026.<\/p>\n
The country has placed large \u200borders for tanks, artillery \u200cand air defence systems, while also seeking to expand domestic \u200bproduction in partnership with foreign manufacturers.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Barbara Erling, \u200bPawel Florkiewicz, Editing by William Maclean)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WARSAW, May 8 (Reuters) – Poland has signed its loan agreement under a European Union defence financing programme,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4587,4602,75,4585,9,4633],"class_list":["post-5660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-arms-industry","tag-defence-capabilities","tag-european-union","tag-loan-agreement","tag-poland","tag-security-action-for-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660","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=5660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}