Its offer was the only one that met all the tender’s criteria, Airbus told Reuters in a statement. aircraft manufacturer Sikorsky and Italian-British AgustaWestland, both of which already manufacture locally, Gowin said “the case is still open”.Īirbus said it planned to directly hire 1,250 people in Poland by 2020 and create a further 2,000 jobs in the sector in connection with the tender. PLAYING HARD BALLĪsked if a PiS-led government would reconsider offers for the $3 billion helicopter tender made by U.S. Its demand faces resistance from Germany, wary of antagonising Moscow by putting permanent NATO bases too close to the Russian border. Poland agreed to raise its own defence spending to the required NATO target of 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) from next year to strengthen its case. It would also probably weaken Poland’s negotiating position at a NATO summit in Warsaw next year, where it will lobby for a permanent alliance presence in eastern Europe, Louth said. “Additional political scrutiny in defence tenders is never a bad thing,” said John Louth, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.īut rewinding the process too far back could delay the acquisitions “by years”, Louth said, adding: “Given the geopolitical situation, this should be a serious concern for Poland and its NATO allies.” Officials say it would be illegal under European Union law to bar foreign companies from tenders, so the onus would be on local industry to be competitive in its offers. Gowin said that as defence minister he would seek to place more than 70 percent of defence orders with companies manufacturing locally. “Each of these tenders will be subject to very careful analysis,” Jaroslaw Gowin, the party’s candidate for defence minister told Reuters. In April, the centre-right government provisionally selected French Airbus Group’s utility helicopters and said it would buy Raytheon’s Patriot missiles from the United States in tenders worth a combined $8 billion.īut the nationalist-minded Law and Justice (PiS) party, tipped to win this month’s election, said it would review the tenders as part of efforts to boost the share of Poland’s defence budget spent domestically if it wins the election. Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine prompted Poland to speed up the modernisation plans. A member of the U.S.-led alliance since 1999, Poland has earmarked $40 billion for military acquisitions by 2022 in a drive to bring its largely Soviet-era military hardware and equipment up to NATO standards.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |