Poland is signing its first 40 contracts under the European Union’s SAFE defence programme, with agreements worth PLN100bn (€23.66bn), Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on May 28.

Under SAFE, Poland may receive up to €43.7bn, or more than PLN180bn, in low-interest loans for arms purchases. After signing the agreement with the European Commission, Poland is expected to receive an advance payment of about PLN20bn soon.

The programme is designed to support large-scale defence procurement and strengthen Europe’s defence industrial base, with common procurement as the standard model.

Poland will, however, seek to ensure that most of the SAFE money — even under joint procurement — is spent with Polish companies, Tusk said.

“More than 10,000 Polish companies operating in Poland and paying taxes in Poland will benefit from SAFE funds. These are contractors, subcontractors and partners,” Tusk said at the signing ceremony for Poland’s first SAFE agreements, held in Legionowo near Warsaw, where the Cyber Defence Forces Component Command is located.

The first contracts cover the procurement of a new-generation post-quantum IP encryptor, a high-trust cryptographic system to protect application-layer communications, a system ensuring secure data exchange between automated command systems with different classification levels, and a mobile cybersecurity laboratory for operations in cyberspace, according to the Polish Defence Ministry.

The contracts are part of Poland’s push to expand domestic defence production while using EU-backed borrowing to finance military modernisation.

SAFE is an EU programme offering low-interest loans to member states for joint defence procurement.

It aims to strengthen Europe’s military capabilities, support domestic defence industries and accelerate weapons purchases after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s approach to NATO exposed gaps in European security. In total, 18 countries have expressed interest in the instrument.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki vetoed on March 13 a law setting out the rules for how Poland would spend money borrowed under SAFE.

The vetoed legislation would have created a management vehicle at the state development bank BGK, allowing the government to handle funds from the EU programme. Nawrocki, who has repeatedly criticised SAFE for adding too much debt to already strained state finances, complicated those plans, although Poland’s allocation under the scheme remained available