The SAFE loan is not, and will not, strengthen our security, because its objective is to radically restrict Poland’s policymaking in the sphere of security. No amendments, by which President Nawrocki is evidently being misled, will change that. The issue is not a Polish statute, but the regulations embedded in SAFE at the level of Brussels.
First, the European Commission is granting us a massive loan on terms that remain unclear to Polish citizens. None of us has seen detailed repayment schedules or precise calculations of the credit’s cost, nor do we know how much the EU institutions will profit from it. Second, we are given a strictly defined shelf from which we may purchase. There is no discretion, no freedom to select armaments tailored to our needs and circumstances or, crucially, to our political strategy.
A brief digression is necessary here. It is in the interest of the Republic of Poland to secure a permanent presence of U.S. troops in our country, not a rotational one, but the kind Germany has: a base, soldiers with their families, full military infrastructure, as well as the social facilities for forces stationed from across the Atlantic. A key argument in negotiating such an arrangement is the purchase of weapons from the United States. Yet the SAFE loan offers no such possibility, because American (and Korean) armaments have been removed by Brussels from the list of eligible options.
Interest in acquiring equipment from overseas is neither lobbying nor servility. This is the false accusation with which Tusk’s team seeks to blackmail the opposition and the Presidential Palace. Equipping the Polish army with American hardware (while simultaneously developing domestic production and working on Polish technological solutions) is the most advantageous and rational option, politically as well as purely technically.
There is also a third reason why the SAFE loan should never be accepted: conditionality, which no provision in Polish law can eliminate. Even if Tusk were to append a hundred pages of declarations rejecting this mechanism, they would merely increase the volume of the act, not its substantive value. Conditionality is a whip against Poland and Poles, one that Brussels has already used in connection with the National Recovery Plan (KPO). One would have to be extremely naive to believe that this time it would refrain from doing so, restrained by incantations written into Polish legislation.
The so-called conditionality mechanism essentially means that EU institutions may decide whether SAFE loan installments are disbursed. They can arbitrarily alter the repayment schedule, demand actions from us in any field whatsoever, and release funds already assigned to us according to their own discretion. They can punish Poles for election results that displease the European Commission, impose solutions we do not want, and, in general, interfere most brazenly and ruthlessly in our internal affairs.
In the coming weeks, President Nawrocki will face pressure to give the green light to this loan-and-gag program, which in truth should not be called SAFE but DANGEROUS. The President’s Chancellery, along with the opposition and independent media, will be portrayed in Tusk’s camp’s propaganda as allies of Putin, blocking the development of the Polish Armed Forces and exposing our country to danger. This must be calmly endured and met with a rational rebuttal to this anti-Polish manipulation.
Poland indeed needs a major rearmament effort, requiring hundreds of billions of PLN. But this will be effective only if we ourselves determine the conditions of loans and purchases. If we are not subjected to blackmail by EU politicians of unknown sponsors and motives. If billions are not funneled into dubious ventures managed by politicians from the “13 December coalition,” and if we control the entire process from beginning to end, synchronizing it with our foreign policy.
It is not the case that Poland has nowhere to borrow money for rearmament and that, without SAFE loans, we are incapable of developing our armed forces. As a state, we continuously engage in such borrowing transactions, and no one in the government claims they are harmful. The hysteria surrounding SAFE, the construction of a moral blackmail, SAFE loan, or defenselessness, is a sham designed to subordinate us to the interests of the largest players within the EU.
On this matter, there is no room for compromise. It is a binary choice: either we prioritize independence in expanding Poland’s defense capabilities (exactly as Germany does), or we make ourselves dependent on the interests of others. I deeply hope that President Nawrocki understands this.