President signs Homeland Defence act

Polish President Andrzej Duda has signed the Homeland Defence bill. The new law is going to raise the budget defence expenditure, increase the number of Polish troops, improve military training possibilities as well as redevelop the system of reservist soldiers.

The official signing of the bill into law has been carried in the Presidential Palace in the presence of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński and representatives of the Polish Army.

The new Homeland Defence bill is going to entirely replace the old regulations. It provides for entirely new methods of financing military expenditure. In 2022 the budget will spend no less than 2.2 percent of Poland’s GDP on defence. From 2023 the expenditure will reach the level of 3 percent of GDP.

Every four years the government, after consultation with the Defence Ministry and NATO, will be obliged to define the directions of modernisation for the armed forces. The plans will also take Poland’s military production and scientific development into account.

The new law provides that the new sources of financing for the Polish Army will include: income from renting military training grounds to foreign troops, offering specialist military services, sale of obsolete military equipment and state bonds.

Preparations for the bill were announced a few months ago by Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the ruling Law and Justice party. He said at the time that “Poland must have at its disposal the armed forces adequate to the kind of situation we have today – forces that will be able to fend off an attack and will be strong enough to prevent such as attack from happening.”