Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speaks during a press conference at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, after meeting with the President of the Republic of Poland Nawrocki in Warsaw, Poland, 10 March 2026. The meeting at the Presidential Palace focused on the proposal by the president, the 'Polish SAFE 0%', a veto to a bill implementing the EU's SAFE defence loan programme. EPA/Piotr Nowak POLAND OUT The decision of opposition-backed President Karol Nawrocki to veto a bill creating a mechanism to spend 43.7-billion euros ($50.00-billion) in EU loans has intensified a rivalry with pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk that complicates policymaking at Poland's highest levels.
"A government meeting is imminent, during which the government will adopt a resolution on the basis of which we will finalise the Polish Armed Forces programme," Tusk told ministers.
"Today, everywhere in Europe is wondering what happened, how this is possible," Tusk said of Nawrocki's veto.
PRESIDENT WARNS OF DEBT RISK
Warsaw was the biggest beneficiary of the EU's Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, but the nationalist opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), labelled it a German plot to meddle in Polish affairs, which would saddle the country with debt and limit its flexibility on arms purchases.
PiS-ally Nawrocki said in a televised address on Thursday that he would veto the government bill to implement the programme because it would leave future generations of Poles paying huge amounts of interest to Western banks.
Tusk's government says SAFE provides financing at low interest rates and is essential to Poland's security in the face of what it views as a rising threat from Russia. The veto will hamper investment in the domestic defence industry, the government said.
The bill vetoed by Nawrocki would have enabled the state development bank BGK to operate a fund to disburse the cash.
Now the government will have to use an existing Armed Forces fund whose rules mean it will be unable to disburse some 7 billion zlotys ($1.87-billion) that had been earmarked for the border guard and the police.
Nawrocki has proposed an alternative bill that would involve using unrealised profits from the rising value of the central bank's gold reserves to fund defence.
The government has rejected this proposal saying it would delay investment, and that in any case the central bank has not been making a profit in recent years.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Kate Mayberry)