SAFE, or Security Action for Europe, is a €150 billion EU loan instrument designed to fast-track joint defence procurement, allowing EU members to buy defence equipment together rather than separately.
In 2007, EU defence ministers set a target of 35% collaborative procurement. By 2022, the figure was still 18% – exactly where it was when the target was set. SAFE is intended to finally get that number to budge.
“Joint programmes could strengthen Europe's strategic autonomy,” Tim Lawrenson, an independent European defence consultant, told us while speaking about SAFE. For the EU, it could “reduce dependence on non-European suppliers,” he explained.
SAFE enables pooled defence orders which cuts prices, reduces duplication, and lets industry invest in production capacity that no single national market can sustain.
SAFE also allows Europe to compete against larger countries like the US and China, and build independent resilience to threats such as Russia.
A shot in the foot
The programme was driven by Polish prime minister Donald Tusk during Poland's EU Council presidency in 2025. His goal was to make Poland the first European country to unlock these funds. But at the last moment, the country's right-wing president, Karol Nawrocki, vetoed the legislation needed to implement it.
“I will never sign a law that undermines our sovereignty, our independence, as well as our economic and military security,” he said in a televised address.
His veto set off a race for the Tusk government against a 30 May 2026 EU deadline. Until that date, Poland could sign SAFE contracts with more favourable rules – keeping the funds flowing to its own defence industry, with Warsaw dictating how to bring in partners. After it, every contract must involve at least one other member.
That is what Nawrocki risked in the name of standing up to Brussels: Poland's ability to gain more and give less to other European capitals.
In the end, Nawrocki failed. Tusk's government routed the loan through an alternative legal mechanism and, on 8 May, Poland became the first EU country to sign a SAFE agreement, securing €43.7 billion in loans for defence, the programme's largest national allocation.
“The success of the SAFE programme, a Polish initiative, demonstrates our growing influence on the EU's policies,” the Polish foreign ministry told us.
In bed with Russia
The rocky path to Poland's SAFE success says a lot about the European far-right's view on European security.
“Traditionally, the nationalist right favoured strong defence. But the new internationalist far-right has deep ideological and sometimes financial ties to Russia, and it is Russian policy to disarm Europe,” Anne Applebaum, a leading journalist and historian covering the transnational right, told us.
“That helps explain the strange situation at the moment, which is that leaders of the far right in Germany, Austria, Romania and elsewhere all support European disarmament, which would leave Europe open to Russian manipulation and even invasion,” she said.
The European far right is at its strongest since World War II. Back then, fascist powers led to the end of European primacy and handed global leadership to the US (a country that now also backs the European far right). Today, radical right parties hold over a quarter of seats in the European Parliament.
Several major far-right parties have cultivated links with Russia. The French National Rally (RN), currently leading in presidential election polls took an €11 million loan from a Russian-linked bank in 2014, around the time Russia annexed Crimea. Though in recent years, RN leader Marine Le Pen has distanced the party from Russia.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a historically high support of 27% in the polls. Two of its top 2024 EU Parliament candidates were stripped of immunity over allegations of taking money from Russian and Chinese sources. And the face of the European sovereigntist right in Brussels, Viktor Orbán’s MCC think tank has direct funding links to Russian oil (who we have covered here).
The sovereigntist haunt
Where this leaves the future of pan-European security initiatives is unsteady to say the least. SAFE was a Polish initiative to rearm Europe, with Poland set to benefit. If even its biggest stakeholder sees the far right trying to tank it, what happens across the rest of Europe – where the far right is rising, and the stakes in the programme are lower? What will happen if RN becomes the next French government in 2027?
“Ultimately, it will come down to whether a prospective RN government feels they can benefit from EU integration, or if they believe they’ll get a better chance by adopting an adversarial stance,” Marta Lorimer, who teaches politics at Cardiff University and is an expert on the European far-right, told us.
Lorimer argues RN's eventual position on SAFE will be tactical rather than fixed, but she points to a broader challenge for SAFE: it's not just the far right who have their preconditions, it's many of those in power across European capitals. “Defence is a core state power and one on which all governments (including non-far right ones) are reluctant to give up any form of real control and sovereignty,” she said.
Today, Poland has seen “the largest investment fund in defence in the country's history,” the foreign ministry told us. But whether SAFE can survive beyond a Tusk government, and whether it can be replicated across a Europe where sovereigntists are rising, is the question that haunts a programme meant to keep Europe safe.