Unused EU recovery funds should be spent on defense, Polish ministers say

WARSAW (Reuters) – Unused European Union funds intended to help member states recover from the pandemic should be channeled into developing the defense industry, Poland’s deputy prime minister and his minister said on Monday Foreign Affairs.

Poland spends more on defense as a proportion of its GDP than other EU states and has called on EU members to increase defense spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“All unused funds from the national recovery plan should be redirected to defense projects,” Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak Kamysz said during a panel at the Defense24 conference in Warsaw.

He added that there would be “a lot of such funds (unused).”

The EU created a €724 billion fund in 2021, known as the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which will be paid to member states over six years to boost public investment and help them to emerge from the pandemic greener and more technological. friendly.

To get the FRR money, member states must implement pre-agreed investments and reforms that will also boost growth in the years to come. Poland and some other countries are currently racing against time to make the necessary investments and reforms before access to the FRR expires in August 2025.

“I completely agree that unused funds from the national recovery plan, globally within the entire Union, should be spent on defense,” said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski during the same round table.

Poland devotes more than 4% of its economic production, double the 2% set by NATO, to defense.

(Reporting by Karol Badohal; editing by Susan Fenton)