State auditor issues damning report on former government’s implementation of “mega-airport” project

Sep 4, 2025 | Business, Politics

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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.

Poland’s state auditor has released a damning report on the former Law and Justice (PiS) government’s implementation of plans to build a new “mega-airport” near Warsaw.

The Supreme Audit Office (NIK) says that a series of “costly mistakes” were made that resulted in delays to the project and hundreds of millions of zloty in lost revenues.

The project in question, known as the Central Communication Port (CPK), was a flagship investment of PiS, which ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023. The party envisioned the airport becoming one of the largest in the world and serving as a major passenger and cargo hub.

However, NIK found that “preparation and implementation of the construction of CPK in the years 2021-2023 was not properly conducted”.

In particular, the PiS government’s plenipotentiary responsible for overseeing the project, Marcin Horała, “improperly supervised the investment, incorrectly defining its scale and scope, and assuming outdated, unrealistic and impossible-to-meet deadlines”.

 

The auditor found, for example, that Horała ignored analyses and forecasts that indicated November 2030 as the earliest possible launch date of CPK and the need to reduce capital expenditure to 35.3 billion zloty (€8.3 billion) to ensure the profitability of the airport.

Instead, Horała set a deadline of 2028 for opening the airport and expected capital expenditure of almost 43 billion zloty. He also planned for its initial capacity to be 40 million passengers a year when analyses had indicated a need to reduce that to 34 million.

Meanwhile, work on the project was repeatedly delayed. For example, the state-owned vehicle tasked with implementing the project was 14 months late in presenting an implementation plan for the 2024-2030 period.

One of the project’s key tasks, a decision on the location of the airport, was only issued in January 2025, 15 months later than planned and under the current government, which replaced PiS in office in December 2023.

Meanwhile, NIK criticised state airport operator PPL for abandoning plans to modernise and develop Warsaw’s existing two airports, Chopin and Modlin, and instead spending over 738 million zloty on the construction of Radom Airport “without economic justification and based on unrealistic assumptions”.

The rebuilt Radom Airport was opened in 2023 with much fanfare by the PiS government. But NIK notes that this was based on “unrealistically optimistic air traffic forecasts”, and that the airport generated operating losses of 67.5 million for PPL in 2023 and 2024.

Meanwhile, PPL lost revenue estimated at over 210 million in 2024 alone as a result of its decision to withdraw from plans to modernise and expand Chopin and Modlin, found NIK. The failure to renovate a major car park at Chopin alone led to 34 million zloty in lost revenues between 2023 and 2025.

NIK says the failure to invest in Modlin was “aimed at bringing about its closure” as well as “influencing carriers to transfer flights to Radom”.

However, as well as resulting in lost revenue for PPL, “the lack of these investments also had a negative impact on the development of national carrier LOT”, which in turn would “impact the profitability of CPK after its launch”.

NIK notes that, only in 2024 and 2025, under the new government, did PPL finally take steps to modernise Chopin and expand its capacity.

However, the auditor also warned that the current government’s decision to make PPL the main partner in the CPK project, rather than coming to “an investment agreement with a partner operating under market conditions”, carries risks as the state company may not have the requisite funds available.

Government spokesman Adam Szłapka declared that NIK’s findings show that PiS’s plans for CPK were “a fiction” and “party propaganda”, with “millions of zloty wasted” and “schedules from outer space”.

“We are fixing this project,” he declared. “Today, CPK is being built by engineers, not politicians.”

The current government plenipotentiary for CPK, Maciej Lasek, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that NIK’s findings had “confirmed those of our internal audits and inspections”, which “clearly show that fixing this project and removing all irregularities were key to building the airport”.

Infrastructure minister Dariusz Klimczak, meanwhile, said that NIK’s report offers “an opportunity for better implementation” of the CPK project.

Horała, however, rejected NIK’s findings, saying that they were based on “uncritical and unverified repetition” of the current government’s political narrative.

On some of the specific accusations, he argued, for example, that investing large sums in Chopin would have been senseless given that it was due to close when CPK opened. He also said that the 14-month delay in deciding on a location resulted from “sabotage by the current government”.

NIK has since 2020 been led by Marian Banaś, a former PiS government minister who has since become a vocal critic of the party. Under his leadership, the state audit office has produced a series of reports criticising various elements of PiS’s time in power.


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: CPK/Foster+Partners (press materials)

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