Tusk declares new “national doctrine” to ensure Poland has “strongest army and economy in region”

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced a new “national doctrine” intended to ensure that Poland has “the strongest army and economy in the region” during a celebration marking the 1,000th anniversary of the coronation of the first Polish king.

On Friday, government ministers, President Andrzej Duda and other high-ranking officials gathered in Gniezno, the city where, in the year 1025, the first Polish king, Bolesław the Brave, was crowned, creating the kingdom of Poland.

“Putting the crown on his head, Bolesław the Brave announced that the kingdom of Poland was becoming part of the West – the West as a political community, a community of values, a community of religion,” said Tusk.

“This choice, constantly renewed, sometimes questioned by our enemies, sometimes questioned by some in Poland, requires constant effort – and it is still, and will always be, relevant. This choice between the political east and the west,” he added.

To mark the occasion, the prime minister declared that he was “announcing a new national doctrine – the Piast doctrine”. The House of Piast, from which Bolesław came, was Poland’s first ruling dynasty.

Tusk said that the new doctrine was based on three aims: for Poland to have “the strongest army in the region, the strongest economy in the region, and a strong position in the European Union”.

The prime minister did not define the parameters of what would constitute the strongest army or economy, or exactly which countries were included in the region.

However, Poland already has NATO’s third-largest military – behind only the United States and Turkey – and the alliance’s largest in Europe. It has the largest relative defence budget in NATO and has been investing heavily in new, modern equipment.

The size of Poland’s economy is estimated to reach $980 billion this year, according to the IMF, making it the eighth largest in Europe, behind Germany ($4.74 trillion), the UK ($3.84 trillion), France ($3.21 trillion), Italy ($2.42 trillion), Russia ($2.08 trillion), Spain ($1.8 trillion), Turkey ($1.44 trillion) and the Netherlands ($1.27 trillion).

However, in terms of GDP per capita, Poland ($26,810) is 27th in Europe and sits behind other countries in its region, such as Slovenia ($35,330), the Czech Republic ($33,040), Estonia ($32,760), Lithuania ($30,840) and Slovakia ($27,130), according to the IMF figures.

But Poland has also recorded faster GDP growth than other countries in the region since joining the EU in 2004. “Looking at the pace at which we are developing, in a few years we will catch up with the largest economies, such as Germany and Japan,” claimed Tusk on Friday. “We are just one step away from that.”

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: KPRM/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.