President Karol Nawrocki has not yet made a decision regarding the EU loan under the SAFE mechanism. Despite this, German media have launched attacks on the head of state as well as on the Polish opposition. “The opposition, however, sees this as a threat to the country’s sovereignty and once again constructs an alleged conspiracy, according to which Brussels, through this program, would interfere in the sovereignty of national defense policy and thus hand Poland over to Germany”, reads today’s edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
SAFE is a European defense loan program intended to support investment in the defense industry in Europe. Under the mechanism, Poland is expected to receive a loan of around €44 billion (PLN 180 billion). The repayment horizon is projected to extend until 2070, but there is still no clear information about the real interest costs. This is particularly important given that the loan would be taken out in euros. Presidential ministers indicate that the interest could be close to the principal amount itself – about PLN 180 billion. In such a scenario, the real cost of the EU SAFE loan would reach approximately PLN 360 billion.
At the same time, a presidential draft bill proposing a solution referred to as “SEJF 0 percent” has been submitted to the Sejm. The proposal was prepared jointly with the President of the National Bank of Poland, Adam Glapiński.
The assumptions of the project were presented to Prime Minister Donald Tusk during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. The details were discussed on Wednesday on Polsat’s news channel by the Head of the President’s Chancellery, Zbigniew Bogucki.
“Prime Minister Tusk said on Friday that if he receives specific proposals – and yesterday he received them – he would prepare a bill within a few hours. He does not have to prepare a bill, because the president has already prepared it, and yesterday I submitted it to the Sejm on the president’s behalf”, Bogucki indicated at the time.
He added that he had hoped the draft would be processed during the current sitting. However, this did not happen. The Speaker of the Sejm, Włodzimierz Czarzasty of the New Left (Lewica), announced during a press conference that the proposal would not be processed for the time being.
The president has not made a decision. German media on the offensive
Although President Nawrocki has not yet made a decision regarding the EU loan, both the ruling camp and media sympathetic to it have continued to criticize the head of state. Now German media have also joined the attacks.
In the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung it was written today that the fact that most of the EU SAFE funds would go to Poland “should cause enormous joy in Warsaw”.
“Instead, however, an internal political dispute has erupted that has no equal even by Polish standards”, the newspaper writes.
Journalist Stefan Locke states in his article that “without Nawrocki’s signature the law cannot enter into force, and so far the president has not signaled that he is willing to do so. He has until the end of next week to make a decision, but more and more indications suggest that, as with more than twenty other government bills, he will also use his veto power in this case.”
German journalist: “Nawrocki cannot…”
Later in the article, the German journalist writes that “Nawrocki cannot simply say ‘no'”.
Why? Because “almost 90 percent of the €44 billion is to be spent in Poland itself; 12,000 domestic companies could benefit.” The problem, however, is that the details of which entities would actually benefit from the funds remain unknown. The commentator also repeats the narrative promoted by the governing camp in Poland and criticizes the president.
“An additional effect would be, in line with Tusk’s intentions, further economic growth and thus an acceleration of Poland’s already well-performing economy. This is not beneficial either for Nawrocki, who emphasizes at every opportunity that he wants to get rid of Tusk, or for the opposition, which wants to take power again after next year’s parliamentary elections. Nawrocki therefore criticized the fact that interest on the SAFE loan burdens the state budget.”
“The opposition, however, sees this as a threat to the country’s sovereignty and once again constructs an alleged conspiracy, according to which Brussels, through this program, would interfere in the sovereignty of national defense policy and thus hand Poland over to Germany”, Locke states.
He also expresses dissatisfaction with the proposal put forward by President Nawrocki and the head of the National Bank of Poland – the “Polish SEJF 0 percent”.
“The National Bank of Poland has been purchasing gold on a large scale for years and currently holds reserves worth about PLN 330 billion (€77.5 billion). However, under the law the bank cannot use these reserves to offset the state budget deficit, regardless of how noble the goal may be. The bank may transfer only its annual surplus to the state budget, but for five years the National Bank of Poland has been recording losses. To finance ‘SAFE 0 percent’, it would therefore suddenly have to show enormous profits”, the article states, adding that “such a plan would require government approval, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk has made it clear that he will not grant such approval.”