Nawrock's veto. Only in Poland the SAFE program fell victim to organization war

Karol Nawrocki's veto did not halt just 1 bill. It has shown that even defence money can be drawn into the organization war in Poland. The SAFE programme, which in another EU countries primarily serves arms financing, has become another field of conflict against Brussels, sovereignty and the advantage of elections.

Photo. youtube.com/@president

There's a circumstantial stake. Poland has at its disposal EUR 43.7 billion from EU SAFE, the largest national pool in the programme worth up to EUR 150 billion. The mechanics was conceived as a origin of long-term preferential loans for defence investments and expansion of industrial capacity. For a country that already spends an exceptionally large amount on an army, it was not a side-up, but 1 of the most crucial external safety financing tools.

The bill vetoed by the president did not make SAFE itself, but was intended to make it easier for Poland to usage this money and give the government more flexibility to spend it. Donald Tusk's office wanted funds could support not only the military, but besides selected needs of the Border Guard, police and safety infrastructure. After the vetoe, this way narrows down. Poland does not automatically lose its allocation, but it loses part of the freedom with which it could usage it.

President's veto won't halt us. Programme #PolandArmy will be implemented. pic.twitter.com/sIhtGYOVZV

And that's the point of the problem. In most Europe, the question about SAFE is: how rapidly and effectively to get money for defense. In Poland, the question was translated into the language of political conflict. Nawrocks, supported by the Law and Justice, have been presenting the program for weeks not as a applicable tool for strengthening the army, but as a risky model of state debt and a possible channel of force from the side Brussels. specified a communicative fits well into a wider dispute with the Tusk government about Poland's place in the Union, but at the same time it shifts the purely defensive sense of the full mechanism.

The president argues that SAFE would mean long-term abroad debt, exchange rate hazard and the anticipation of linking financing to the EU conditionality. This position cannot be abandoned as an empty slogan, due to the fact that it is indeed a dispute over the model of state funding. The problem is, however, that its political burden proved to be greater than the applicable question whether Poland should usage the available, comparatively inexpensive instrument during the fast expansion of military potential. This is how the government responds: in conditions of war for the east border and rising arms costs blocking a simpler way to finance is simply a blow to the state's efficiency, regardless of the ideological frame of the dispute.

Nawrocks and his camp are trying to show that there is an alternate more "swingenna", based on the usage of value gains reserves of NBP gold. Politically, this sounds attractive due to the fact that it allows us to tell the case as a choice between "a unusual loan" and "own resourceIt’s okay. ” However, it remains more a political task than a ready-to-use, proven mechanics that could immediately replace EU backing on a akin scale and with comparable predictability. This is besides why the government considers the golden alternate to be an uncertain and risky solution.

The Polish dispute about SAFE is most striking not the deficiency of consent, but what this deficiency of consent concerns. We are not talking about a side social programme or a symbolic motion towards Brussels. We are talking about a mechanics that was expected to aid finance state safety at 1 of the most dangerous moments for Europe in decades. Meanwhile, in Poland it was subjected to the logic of the war between the president supported by the opposition and the government. This is what distinguishes the Polish case from most EU countries, and that is why Politico's thesis sounds so strong: we alone have grown up to be a full-time political problem.

You don't gotta add bad will to see the consequences. Just put together the facts: a immense pool of funds, an EU instrument designed to strengthen defence faster, a government trying to scope for it, and the president who blocks this road in the name of a dispute over sovereignty and relations with Brussels. This creates an image of a policy in which the organization conflict proves stronger than the imperative of efficient state-arming. And that is the most serious political sense of veto present against SAFE.

DF, thefad.pl / Source: Politico, Reuters, European Commission, EU Council