European Union members should agree on a “shopping list” of what major defence projects they would like to jointly fund before arguing over how much the bloc would commit to spend in the area, the Polish minister for finance has said.
Andrzej Domanski said it was clear that some EU states needed to spend “way more” of their national budgets on defence. Poland was hoping to invest close to 5 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence this year, he added.
Mr Domanski was speaking in Warsaw, along with several colleagues from prime minister Donald Tusk’s government, to mark Poland taking over the six-month rotating presidency of the council of the EU. The government is planning to use its time in the deal-making role to put a renewed focus on security, including how EU states can further increase financial support for Ukraine to help it in its war with Russia.
Speaking on Wednesday, minister for defence Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said Poland had become a European leader on defence, spending nearly as much as France, something that would have been “unthinkable” previously.
The minister said he was in favour of a proposal for EU states to jointly fund a European air defence shield, similar to Israel’s Iron Dome system that shoots down missiles and rockets targeting its territory. “We know from which direction the threat will come, we know where we will need to deploy air defence systems.”
He said the long-standing target for all members of the Nato military alliance to spend 2 per cent of their GDP on defence and security was no longer sufficient to deter Russia from threatening Europe. “We need to spend more on rearming ourselves, our armies, not to substitute the presence of the American ally in Europe but to complement, to work hand in hand with this ally.”
The same message was repeated by prime minister Donald Tusk, who said there could no longer be any “leniency” for Nato members who were not pulling their weight. Mr Tusk, whose pro-EU coalition came to power in late 2023, said Europe could also not afford to be divided on how to ensure its own security.
EU politicians and officials are bracing themselves for what approach incoming United States president Donald Trump will take to the Ukraine war, with fears he could limit or pull the huge amount of support Washington sends to Kyiv.
Mr Tusk said the best way European states could guarantee the US would continue to provide military aid to Ukraine would be to increase their own defence contributions, something Mr Trump has consistently criticised as being too low.
“The new Washington administration once it sees how serious we are about this will adopt a different approach, a more optimistic approach about Ukraine,” he said.
Mr Tusk was speaking after meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Warsaw.
The prime minister said Poland would help “accelerate” Ukraine’s efforts towards EU membership, something that had been stalled by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban’s far-right government when it held the EU council presidency.
Separately, authorities in Poland had identified cases of Russian intelligence officers trying to set up “outfits” to instigate panic and spread disinformation online as the country heads towards crucial presidential elections later this year, minister for tech Krzysztof Gawkowski told reporters. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, needed to take a “strong position” and stick to its guns in trying to rein in election disinformation on social media platforms, rather than roll back online regulations, he said.
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