WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s incoming government may invalidate contracts signed by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party after it lost its majority in an Oct. 15 election, the parliament speaker said on Sunday, casting doubt over some arms deals with South Korea.
Warsaw has signed deals to buy billions of dollars worth of arms from South Korea as part of a drive to build up its military in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, the Financial Times reported in November that Seoul was worried that the change of government combined with a lack of funds could jeopardise some deals.
Reuters reported that South Korea was gathering local banks to help Poland buy $22 billion worth of weapons, in an indication that it was working to remove Poland’s financing hurdles.
“Agreements signed by the interim PiS government may be invalidated,” Parliament Speaker Szymon Holownia, whose party is expected to be a member of the incoming coalition government, told private broadcaster Radio Zet. “After Oct. 15, PiS should have limited itself to administering the state and not spending public money.”
Holownia spoke after the man set to become Poland’s next defence minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told Radio Zet on Saturday that deals signed by the government after Oct. 15 would be subject to “analysis and evaluation”.
Kosiniak-Kamysz also stressed the importance of making investments with the Polish arms industry.
Current Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said that the review of contracts referred to by Kosiniak-Kamysz was tantamount to an announcement of them being cancelled.
“They will populistically say that we will replace equipment from Korea with equipment from the Polish arms industry, and we will end up with nothing,” he wrote on social media platform X.
The broad coalition of pro-European Union parties to which Holownia and Kosiniak-Kamysz belong is expected to take power on Monday if PiS Prime Minster Mateusz Morawiecki loses a vote of confidence as is expected.
Recent arms deals with South Korea include a $2.6 billion deal to buy more than 150 South Korean K9 howitzers and an agreement to buy 288 Chunmoo rocket launchers.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Susan Fenton)
