Dr. Jacek Zaleśny, a constitutional lawyer from the Institute of Political Science at the University of Warsaw, assessed that since the president, as the highest representative of the state, vetoed the law authorizing the taking out of loans from the SAFE mechanism, other state authorities cannot do so without a statute.
“In light of Polish law, Polish state authorities do not have the competence to undertake an international obligation within the SAFE mechanism,” the lawyer stated.
According to the expert, the use of SAFE requires the consent of the Sejm expressed in a statute due to the scale of the loans involved. In an interview with Defence24.pl, Dr. Jacek Zaleśny also pointed out that the government is approaching the constitutional threshold for permissible public debt.
An obligation under international law may only be undertaken by a state authority that is empowered to act on behalf of the state. In Poland’s case, the provisions regulating the division of competences between the Sejm, the Council of Ministers, and the president apply. The SAFE mechanism is referred to in Polish legal regulations—namely the act vetoed by the president—as well as in the EU Council regulation on SAFE. The matter is also governed by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and the Polish Act on International Agreements.
“If all applicable legal provisions are taken into account, the lack of the president’s consent to bind Poland to the SAFE mechanism—as a consequence of the veto—means that, under Polish law, Polish state authorities do not have the competence to undertake an international obligation within the SAFE mechanism,” Zaleśny stated.
“Consequences in the international legal sphere”
He pointed out that “since the president, who under Article 126(1) of the Constitution is the highest representative of the Republic of Poland, publicly announced—making it a commonly known fact—that Poland will not use the SAFE mechanism because there is no presidential approval, this has far-reaching consequences for what may occur in the international legal sphere.”
According to Dr. Zaleśny, “the president’s decision means that, in the international arena, an obligation under SAFE cannot be undertaken precisely because there is no consent from the domestic authority required to implement the SAFE mechanism.”
The expert stressed that any entity currently acting on behalf of Poland regarding SAFE would be doing so without proper authorization, which would have consequences for the validity of such an agreement.
“If a potential creditor has been informed that the potential debtor seeking to conclude a contract is not authorized to do so, and nevertheless the creditor signs such an agreement, then the creditor bears the full risk associated with it. In the future, it may turn out that the debtor undertook an obligation and borrowed money, but the creditor will not recover those funds because they lent money to someone who did not have the competence to undertake obligations on behalf of the state—meaning that the debtor would be a private individual who assumed the debt, rather than the state,” he explained.
He emphasized that “what has happened in Poland has far-reaching practical consequences also in the international legal sphere, including in the context of any potential obligation between the European Commission and an entity acting on behalf of Poland.”
“Consent of the Sejm expressed in a statute”
Referring to the question of whether the government could use another, non-statutory path regarding SAFE, he pointed to Article 89 of the Constitution, which lists five categories of cases in which concluding an international obligation requires the consent of the Sejm expressed in a statute.
One of these concerns obligations that impose significant financial burdens on the state. According to Zaleśny, this is precisely the case with the SAFE mechanism, whose use by Poland would have major financial consequences—estimated at around 180 billion złoty in loans (plus the cost of servicing the loan, which in practice would not be lower than the loan amount itself).
For comparison, annual state budget expenditures for 2026 amount to about 900 billion złoty.
“Even if the SAFE mechanism concerned purely financial matters, it still could not proceed without the consent of the Sejm expressed in a statute,” Zaleśny said.