Poland’s Military Boom Is Running On Borrowed Money, And Borrowed Time – Analysis
March 12, 2026
Balkan Insight
By Ada Petriczko
Poland is financing the “strongest land army in Europe” on debt, shrinking personnel and a repayment schedule that collides with the very years NATO expects the threat from Russia to peak. Can the model hold when the bills come due?
There is a conversation Europe is postponing.
Across the continent, defence spending is rising at a speed not seen in decades. Governments are accelerating procurement, expanding forces and constructing new financial instruments to fund deterrence. The urgency needs no explanation. But what has moved more slowly is the conversation about how all this will ultimately be paid for.
In few countries is that tension more visible than in Poland.
Roughly one-quarter of the country’s entire 2026 budget is allocated to defence – an extraordinary share for a European democracy not formally at war. Warsaw is racing to build what officials describe as the strongest land army in Europe. Tanks, missile systems, air defence, drones: the procurement pipeline is extensive and already largely contracted.
From the outside, the story appears straightforward: a frontline state invests accordingly. But the financial architecture behind it is more complicated. Rearmament is being funded through mechanisms that assume time – time for economic growth to continue, for interest rates to stabilise, for security pressures not to escalate faster than fiscal systems can adjust.
Nearly 37 per cent of defence spending is financed through borrowing accumulated by the Armed Forces Support Fund, an off-budget vehicle created to accelerate modernisation. According to Poland’s Supreme Audit Office, servicing that debt through 2035 will be costly, with a significant share of repayments falling between 2027 and 2031 – the very window in which Russia is expected to begin rebuilding its conventional military strength.
The overlap does not imply inevitability. But it sharpens the structural question: what happens when defence urgency and fiscal constraint begin to move in opposite directions?
Deterrence on credit
“Everyone in Europe is buying time,” Marek Swierczynski, a defence analyst at the Polish think tank Polityka Insight, tells BIRN. “And, to be blunt, the time we have has also been bought with Ukrainians’ blood – and with the fact that Russia isn’t as strong as once feared.”
Poland’s military expansion is being largely financed by debt. As a result, the country’s structural deficit has widened rapidly, raising concerns about the risk of entering a debt spiral – refinancing existing obligations with new, potentially costlier borrowing. The deficit is among the fastest-growing in the EU, which prompted Brussels to place Poland under the excessive deficit procedure in 2024.
Whether limits drafted in the 1990s – during Poland’s transition to a market economy – still reflect current security realities is being increasingly debated.
“They were shaped by a particular financial ideology,” Swierczynski says. “They may no longer fit today’s reality.”
For now, the government insists constitutional change is not on the table.
SAFE bet?
Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk does not dispute the scale of the effort – or its cost. “I would naturally prefer us to spend as much as possible on defence – even more, if circumstances allowed,” he tells BIRN. “But while the armed forces are a system in which spending can always expand, the challenge is to identify an optimum. Today, Poland is operating above that level.”
The decision, he argues, was deliberate. “It was a political choice supported across parliament when the Homeland Defence Act was adopted,” he says, referring to 2022 legislation. “We are paying the price of that decision – and we accept that cost, because we see no viable alternative.”
From there, the financing architecture follows. Modernisation rests on three principal sources: the regular state budget, the Armed Forces Support Fund and, pending finalisation, the EU-backed funding under the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative – a 150-billion-euro EU financial instrument aimed at boosting defence industrial production through joint, long-term, low-interest loans for member states.
The Support Fund, Tomczyk acknowledges, was not originally designed with a detailed repayment structure. Discussions with the Finance Ministry continue over how best to service the debt without constraining procurement. Folding the fund into the regular budget would push public debt beyond existing thresholds. In that sense, the fund remains largely a fiscal workaround, an instrument of creative accounting at the level of public finances, “albeit in a just cause”, in Swierczynski’s view.
SAFE, potentially worth close to 200 billion zloty for defence-related investment, changes the near-term picture. It allows refinancing at lower cost and supports new capabilities barely on the planning horizon five years ago – counter-drone systems among them.
But SAFE, long presented as a technical financing instrument, has become increasingly political in Poland. President Karol Nawrocki has signalled he may veto legislation enabling Warsaw to access the mechanism, arguing that it raises sovereignty concerns and requires “serious debate”. Politicians from the right-wing opposition parties have gone further, portraying SAFE as a vehicle for Brussels to exert control over Polish defence policy – rhetoric that carries a distinct ‘Polexit’ undertone, say critics.
“For now, the president is hesitating,” Swierczynski says. “What stands out instead is the ferocity of the backlash from PiS and Confederation, which blends anti-government, anti-EU and anti-German rhetoric with a distinctly pro-American line.”
Regardless of the politics, SAFE remains debt. But Tomczyk insists on reframing the hierarchy of priorities. “In a wartime scenario all the things we’re discussing now – funds, financing structures – would become irrelevant. We would spend everything we could on defence, and we would be doing so from a much more difficult starting point.”
The fiscal debate exists precisely because Poland is not at war. The spending trajectory reflects the possibility that it might one day be.
Collision of timelines
Debt carries its own logic. A significant share of borrowing must be serviced in the very years when security risks may intensify. The risk is not immediate insolvency but compression: refinancing obligations at a higher cost just as deterrence pressure peaks.
“That’s the dilemma the next government may face,” Swierczynski says. “In a crisis, legal constraints would be the easiest to loosen. Parliament could amend the constitution quickly, supported by rally-around-the-flag sentiment.”
Deficits could rise sharply, but if the confrontation was contained – or successful – Poland “would deal with the bill later”, he adds.
Poland is not alone in facing this tension.
Germany continues to debate how to reconcile its debt brake with the ambitions of its Zeitenwende (“Turning Point” or “Era Change”). France expands defence amid persistent deficits. The Baltic states allocate high shares of GDP to security despite narrow fiscal buffers. Italy confronts NATO expectations while carrying heavy public debt.
What distinguishes Poland is not recklessness but concentration: very high defence spending relative to GDP; rapid expansion; heavy reliance on off-budget borrowing; constitutional thresholds formally intact; broad political consensus; and a procurement program already contracted at scale.
In that sense, Poland offers one of the clearest illustrations of how European democracies are stretching fiscal and political systems to finance deterrence.
The question nobody wants to ask
Money is only part of the equation. Even as Poland races to buy weapons, the targets for expanding its armed forces are being revised downward.
“Only about a quarter of the population declares a willingness to serve with a weapon,” Swierczynski notes. “That’s why the idea of selective conscription has resurfaced inside the General Staff.”
At the same time, Polish public support for increased defence spending – currently at 92 per cent according to GLOBSEC – remains among the highest in the EU. But this could be because Poland has so far avoided the difficult conversations around militarisation. It has managed to expand defence spending without visible trade-offs. The healthcare budget continues to rise. Infrastructure development moves forward. Growth still underwrites revenue. There has been no austerity moment.
“The question of social resilience barely applies here, because society hasn’t felt the cost yet,” Swierczynski argues. “As long as the price remains abstract, that probably won’t change.”
But the debate is pending. Not on whether Poland should rearm – few serious voices suggest otherwise – but whether the country is prepared for the possibility that growth slows, interest costs rise, or security demands expand further.
Asked if Poland may one day have to choose between hospitals and tanks, Tomczyk resists the binary. “I would not want citizens to see this as a stark alternative,” he says. “If the economy continues to expand, growth itself will increase budget revenues and strengthen our fiscal capacity.”
At the same time, Tomczyk argues that citizens have, in a sense, already made their choice. “When 94 per cent of Poles say they trust their soldiers, that effectively means they support strengthening and equipping them,” he says.
Perhaps. But budgets are finite. Economic expansion is not guaranteed. Interest costs compound regardless of strategic necessity.
The model works – for now. But it depends on growth, political consensus, and a security environment that does not deteriorate faster than repayment schedules mature.
Poland has chosen not to wait.
Whether the time it has bought proves sufficient will depend less on bond yields than on the trajectory of the war next door – and on how long Europe can sustain deterrence at this scale within fiscal rules written for calmer times.
Balkan Insight
The Balkan Insight (formerly the Balkin Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN) is a close group of editors and trainers that enables journalists in the region to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes. BIRN emerged from the Balkan programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, in 2005. The original IWPR Balkans team was mandated to localise that programme and make it sustainable, in light of changing realities in the region and the maturity of the IWPR intervention. Since then, its work in publishing, media training and public debate activities has become synonymous with quality, reliability and impartiality. A fully-independent and local network, it is now developing as an efficient and self-sustainable regional institution to enhance the capacity for journalism that pushes for public debate on European-oriented political and economic reform.
Morocco becomes Africa’s top arms importer, amid tensions with Algeria
Morocco has become the largest importer of major weapons in Africa, with purchases rising over the past five years as the country continues to modernise its military, a report has found. The increase comes amid continuing tensions with neighbouring Algeria.
Issued on: 11/03/2026 - RFI
Morocco has become the largest importer of major weapons in Africa, with purchases rising over the past five years as the country continues to modernise its military, a report has found. The increase comes amid continuing tensions with neighbouring Algeria.
Issued on: 11/03/2026 - RFI
A Moroccan air force F-16 fighter jet. Between 2021 and 2025, the United States was the kingdom’s main supplier of military equipment. AP - Mosa'ab Elshamy
The findings come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in Sweden, which tracks global arms transfers.
Its latest report, published this week, shows Morocco’s imports of major weapons rose by 12 percent between 2021 and 2025 compared with the 2016-2020 period.
Major weapons include equipment such as armoured vehicles, fighter jets, warships and missile systems.
Morocco now ranks 28th in the world among arms importing countries, as Rabat continues to modernise its armed forces in a region marked by “persistent tensions” with neighbouring Algeria, the report said.
Algeria’s own arms imports fell by 78 percent over the same period.
But Sipri urged caution with the figures, noting that Algeria tends to be discreet about its military purchases.
The findings come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in Sweden, which tracks global arms transfers.
Its latest report, published this week, shows Morocco’s imports of major weapons rose by 12 percent between 2021 and 2025 compared with the 2016-2020 period.
Major weapons include equipment such as armoured vehicles, fighter jets, warships and missile systems.
Morocco now ranks 28th in the world among arms importing countries, as Rabat continues to modernise its armed forces in a region marked by “persistent tensions” with neighbouring Algeria, the report said.
Algeria’s own arms imports fell by 78 percent over the same period.
But Sipri urged caution with the figures, noting that Algeria tends to be discreet about its military purchases.
Three main suppliers
The report also lists Morocco’s main arms suppliers.
The United States accounted for around 60 percent of deliveries to the country between 2021 and 2025, followed by Israel with around 24 percent and France with about 10 percent.
The figures point to a recent strengthening of military cooperation between Rabat and Israel, particularly in surveillance systems.
Elsewhere in Africa, the trend was very different. Arms imports by other countries on the continent fell by 41 percent between 2021 and 2025.
During that period, the US supplied 19 percent of weapons deliveries to Africa, followed by China, Russia and France.
The report also lists Morocco’s main arms suppliers.
The United States accounted for around 60 percent of deliveries to the country between 2021 and 2025, followed by Israel with around 24 percent and France with about 10 percent.
The figures point to a recent strengthening of military cooperation between Rabat and Israel, particularly in surveillance systems.
Elsewhere in Africa, the trend was very different. Arms imports by other countries on the continent fell by 41 percent between 2021 and 2025.
During that period, the US supplied 19 percent of weapons deliveries to Africa, followed by China, Russia and France.
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