Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Bofferbrauer2]

crissindahouse said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

In fact, they're going so nuts that it's getting difficult to understand how Poland will actually pay for all of this. Those 1380 high-tech high-end MBT alone will rip a big hole in the Polish budget, both for acquiring and for maintenance and future upgrades, especially considering that the K2 was often cited as being the most expensive MBT there is. Unless they are planning to send some of these new acquisitions to Ukraine, their military budget would balloon so far that Poland will be forced to make big loans through the next years just for them.

Poland is also by far the biggest beneficiary of the EU budget. They get like 12 billion more than they contribute.  

That's because it's by far the largest eastern European country in terms of population, and still one of the poorest in terms of GDP/capita - just Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia are doing worse in that regard (although they will soon overtake Greece this year) - so they will get the largest contribution for a while.

However, their fast growth will also result in that contribution shrinking in the near future. Right now Poland sits at ~20000€/capita, which is about twice what they had in 2012; for reference Portugal sits at 25000€/c, Spain at 30000, Italy at 35000 and France at 40000, and all of them grow much slower than Poland (they all grew less in absolute numbers than Poland, not just by percentage).

So if Poland's growth continues at the same pace as it did the last 10 years, they will overtake several countries and get close to other big western economies, resulting in much less windfall than they receive right now. Which will make financing their military expansion quite difficult down the road.