The consensus between the Polish centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the opposition Conservatives (PiS) over Polish defence and security policy has broken down.
That came as both PiS and the right-wing Confederation parties opposed a parliamentary resolution supporting the idea of a European defence force to fill any void left by the US.
Poland’s parliament on March 20 passed a resolution in support of the European Parliament’s position on creating a European defence capability that included provisions for a European loan fund to drive rearmament.
The European Parliament’s resolution on the White Paper on Defence of March 12 “welcomed” the European rearmament plan presented by the European Commission. That included a €150 billion instrument to request loans for defence spending and support for the Polish “Eastern Shield” initiative of fortifying the country’s borders with Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
All PiS and the Confederation party MPs opposed the resolution in the Polish parliament. Tusk accused them of being against Poland’s and Europe’s security, saying that “every such vote, every political act that hinders European security, military build-up, or the defence of Poland’s border is Russian sabotage”.
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński took to X to state: “Tusk’s decisions on Polish security amounted to giving Brussels and Berlin Polish money for armaments and control over our army. We cannot agree to giving away key attributes of our sovereignty.”
Marcin Ociepa MP, the PiS defence spokesman, told Polish independent Conservative leaning TV Republika that the European Union was playing a dangerous game aimed at pushing the US out of Europe and that Tusk was weakening Polish sovereignty over its defences.
He claimed the EU was seeking “a pretext to weaken NATO”, despite the bloc not having the resources to take over, in order to “remove the US from Europe and take full control over the defence policies of member states”.
“The EU wants to take over defence but it has no money for it. These are just ideological fantasies that could cost us more than we expect,” he added.
Ociepa also pointed out that the European Parliament’s resolution contained no concrete financial commitments, making it, in his view, merely an ideological declaration with no real impact on security.
Up until the return of US President Donald Trump to the White House, the opposition-aligned Polish President Andrzej Duda and Tusk’s centre-left government had agreed on support for Ukraine, with Poland rearming and working closely with the US on strengthening the eastern flank of NATO.
The breakdown in consensus over Polish security policy will likely affect the Polish presidential election campaign with Tusk’s centre-left members projecting themselves as favouring European support for Ukraine and seeing the EU as key to Polish security.
The PiS and Confederation were likely to continue to look towards the US and NATO as the main protectors of Poland’s independence and sovereignty.
