Maciej Samsonowicz: Hundreds of billions for defence must build the Polish economy

Less than two years ago Kashubia was a slogan from a press conference in Gdynia. Today it is Norway's Kongsberg planning two plants on the Polish coast, a Gdynia hall for the counter-drone systems of Advanced Protection Systems, satellite radars from Eycore and a Korean investment in West Pomerania, with Rheinmetall, X-Energy and Saab waiting in line. Behind them stand the hundreds of billions of zlotys Poland will spend on defence this decade, including nearly EUR 44 billion from the EU's SAFE instrument, and one thesis our interviewee repeats like a mantra: this money must stay in the country and build the Polish economy.

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05 september 2026   |   10:38   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Maciej Samsonowicz / Sejm RP

Maciej Samsonowicz, adviser to Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, is the author of the concept and coordinator of the working group of the Kashubia Green Industrial District, a state initiative of defence significance covering the Pomeranian, West Pomeranian and Kuyavian-Pomeranian regions. Alongside the Pact for the Security of Poland for Central Pomerania and the Baltic Declaration, the project is one of the three pillars of what is known as the Baltic Shield. The district's specialisation is nuclear and offshore energy, ports and maritime logistics, shipyards and dual-use defence industry, and security systems for critical infrastructure.

The conversation keeps returning to names that are on everyone's lips in Pomerania today: cheap power from Baltic wind farms, the nuclear power plant near Choczewo, the Red Road linking the port of Gdynia with the national road network, the SAFE instrument and the government's Polska Zbrojna (Poland Armed) programme. And one more institution without which the puzzle will not come together: Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, the state development bank, operator of the Armed Forces Support Fund and guarantor of the financing that is to take Pomeranian companies from a letter of intent to series production. We are talking on the eve of a new edition of ARMA Forum, a year-round cycle of industry conferences in which the Kashubia Green Industrial District will have its own event in Wejherowo, at the heart of the Little Kashubian Tricity, which is to become one of the district's pillars.

Kashubia already has its first foreign investor from the defence sector, and further companies are declaring their involvement. How do you assess today the volume of capital actually contracted against mere declarations, and what is the assumed timetable of investment?

Maciej Samsonowicz: Norway's Kongsberg, as the first foreign investor, has announced it will launch production in Pomerania: medium-calibre turrets, their integration with counter-drone systems, and uncrewed surface vessels. We are talking about outlays exceeding PLN 200 million (around EUR 46 million) and as many as two plants, one on land and one maritime. Advanced Protection Systems is earmarking PLN 100 million (around EUR 23 million) to increase production capacity and build a hall in or near Gdynia. Eycore is earmarking PLN 50 million (around EUR 11.5 million) for a centre with a clean room and for satellite radars. In the West Pomeranian region, with the participation of PKP Cargo and a Korean partner, we are discussing an investment of around half a billion zlotys (around EUR 115 million) in modern industrial and logistics facilities. That is the first wave. Added up, we are at around PLN 1 billion of declarations from a handful of entities, and more are waiting in line. Already today we have Germany's Rheinmetall ready to invest PLN 500 million, America's X-Energy ready to invest around USD 1 billion in a fuel plant for fourth-generation SMRs, the American company Quantum Space, which wants to work with Polish firms, and Sweden's Saab with more than PLN 300 million.

While working with investors we are not forgetting infrastructure spending: the Red Road linking the port of Gdynia with the national road network, the modernisation of railway line 202, power grids, the first section of the bypass. Without that, industry simply will not get going. You cannot run large-scale production and maritime logistics without efficient access and connection capacity. The first investments are already starting in the 2026-2028 horizon. On top of that, Kashubia's energy foundation, the offshore wind farms, has been growing since this year, and the nuclear power plant near Choczewo will join in. This is a project mapped out over a whole decade, not a single budget cycle. I would add that the institutional environment is gathering pace too: a Parliamentary Group for the Kashubia Green Industrial District has been set up, local government officials at every level support the project, and a broad, cross-party consensus is building around it. For investors that is a clear signal that this is not a single-term initiative.

The latest and rather unexpected investment idea is KGHM and Pomeranian potash deposits. How does that fit into the district?

It fits perfectly and I am very pleased about it. We are talking about documented potassium-magnesium salt deposits in the Mieroszyno area, in Puck county. It is a raw material for mineral fertilisers, whose importance has grown sharply since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the turmoil on commodity markets. So not defence in the narrow sense, but food security and raw material independence. And that is exactly the same logic of state resilience on which I base the whole district.

That is why I stress that the Kashubia Green Industrial District is not merely a regional project. It is part of a broader concept of building the economic and strategic security of the entire Baltic Sea basin, and a potential KGHM investment in exploiting these deposits would have a significance going far beyond business. The defence ministry looks at it not only through economic calculation, but also through the prism of state security and domestic production capacity, and that is why it has joined the talks.

What matters to me is that the project has strong support from local government. Letters of support have been sent to the central authorities, among others, by the head of Puck county and the mayors of Władysławowo and Rumia. This shows Kashubia's recurring pattern: an investment of importance to security which at the same time creates jobs and attracts infrastructure, and which the region treats as its own.

Infrastructure first, factories later, you say. Where does this order come from? Is it economic or defence logic?

Both, and that is the whole essence of Kashubia. The same roads and the same railway lines that will serve industry are at the same time defence infrastructure. The war in Ukraine brutally reminded us how crucial the logistics base is: roads, ports, rail routes. Kashubia is part of the Pact for the Security of Poland for Central Pomerania, whose aim is to prepare the region for the rapid reception and deployment of allied forces. I sometimes say that the roads we want to build are roads of peace, because if every NATO state is able to move forces efficiently, war need never happen. So one could say that deterrence begins with asphalt and rails.

The Red Road is a symbol here. Our allies in the United States wrote about its strategic character before Polish politicians did, and my predecessors put it on the shelf. I take it very seriously. Within the Pact, the team has prepared a full set of infrastructure recommendations. We know which investments must be built for defence reasons, but we want those same investments to work every day for the economy of the region and of Poland. It is the dual-use model in its purest form: one outlay, two functions. A bridge that carries containers in peacetime and heavy equipment in a crisis.

Here we work in parallel. We are servicing the land with roads, rail and power while at the same time working with investors. It is also the most honest way of talking to residents: we show that the project leaves behind durable, useful infrastructure that everyone will benefit from, regardless of how many factories are built.

The renewable component is written into the very name of the district. To what extent does access to local, zero-emission energy translate into the cost of financing and the eligibility of projects for EU instruments, from the taxonomy to transition funds?

It is not an ornament, it is the axis of the whole construction, and that is why the word "green" stands in the name and not in a subtitle. When we designed Kashubia, we started from a simple observation about the direction in which European financing is heading. A green energy component in new investments will soon be not so much rewarded as simply required, and that requirement will keep growing. Understanding that logic, we decided from the outset to propose a model that makes this place the most attractive for investors in Europe. Precisely because today you go for financing to institutions that look at this factor first.

Two mechanisms are at work here. The first is hard economics. A simple calculation shows that if we offer electricity around thirty per cent cheaper in transmission charges than in the rest of the country, a company will conclude it is worth locating its investment here. For energy-intensive industry, and defence, space, steelmaking or data centres largely are, the cost of energy is often the difference between profitability and its absence. That is not a marketing incentive, it is a line in the financial model that the investor enters into the spreadsheet.

The second mechanism is financial and less obvious, and in my view more important in the long term. An investment powered by zero-emission energy, from offshore wind farms and ultimately from nuclear, meets the criteria of the EU taxonomy and the ESG criteria of banks and funds far more easily. And meeting those criteria is not a matter of image, but of a genuinely lower cost of capital: cheaper debt financing, access to transition instruments, a smaller risk margin. In a world where the civilian financing cycle is being greened ever more strongly, a location that guarantees green power simply becomes cheaper to service.

The best proof that it works is the industries that come forward themselves. There are companies interested in building several data centres in the region, each worth billions of zlotys, precisely because a data centre needs enormous quantities of clean and cheap energy, and that will be available in Kashubia. To put it plainly: green energy in Kashubia plays a double role. It lowers the energy bill today and lowers the cost of money tomorrow. Both attract capital.

The energy base is to be the Baltic offshore wind farms, whose first capacity is just entering the national power system. How synchronised is the connection schedule of the farms with the planned start-up of plants in the district?

Here one has to speak the language of dates, not promises, because in offshore the dates are already quite firm. Poland's first offshore wind farm, Baltic Power, a joint project of the Orlen Group and Northland Power with a capacity of around 1.2 gigawatts, delivered its first power this summer and is to reach full operation of its seventy-six turbines in the second half of 2026. It will then cover around three per cent of national demand and supply more than one and a half million households. The largest project of the first phase, Baltica 2 of the PGE Group and Ørsted, with a capacity of nearly one and a half gigawatts, will deliver first power in the first half of 2027, with commercial start by the end of that year. Others follow: Baltica 3, the Bałtyk 2 and 3 projects of the Polenergia and Equinor consortium, the BC-Wind, RWE and Ocean Winds farms.

So I repeat what I have been saying from the start: offshore wind farms are launched first, and only later will the nuclear power plant near Choczewo, with a capacity of around three gigawatts, join in. That is the natural order: offshore comes in this decade, nuclear in the next.

We have two curves here that rise in parallel and that we are consistently bringing together. The first plants of the Kashubia Green Industrial District start up in 2026-2028, exactly when successive gigawatts of offshore wind energy begin to flow into the national power system. That means that in the coming years investors will be able to use ever larger quantities of competitive green energy, and as further farms and nuclear power are commissioned, its availability will grow systematically.

In parallel we are working with the energy companies so that strategic investors building the state's defence potential can count on priority connection conditions and solutions ensuring stable and competitive energy supplies. Our goal is the simultaneous development of the defence industry and of modern energy.

The region's entire infrastructure base is growing as well: installation ports in Świnoujście and Gdańsk, service bases in Łeba and Ustka, the construction of the Outer Port in Gdynia and the expansion of the port of Kołobrzeg. This is infrastructure that will work for the security and economy of Poland for decades to come.

Is the power supply of energy-intensive plants to be based on PPA contracts and dedicated connections, or on balancing within the national system? And what role does the pace of expansion of the PSE transmission grid play here?

It is not an either-or choice, but a layered model, and it has to be understood that way. The foundation always remains the national power system, because no serious plant will rely on a single source alone. Offshore wind is by nature variable and requires balancing, for which dispatchable capacity is needed, gas today, nuclear ultimately. Security of supply comes from the system, not from an individual farm.

On that foundation we want to build long-term PPA contracts, which give the investor what it needs most: a predictable energy price for years, often directly from a specific farm. For some projects, the largest and most energy-intensive, dedicated connections and solutions close to the direct line model will also make sense. So the combination is: PPA and a dedicated connection where scale justifies it, plus balancing and security from the level of the national system. Different investors will choose a different mix, and rightly so, because flexibility is an asset here.

And here we come to a bottleneck that must not be glossed over: the pace of expansion of the PSE transmission grid. You can produce gigawatts at sea, but if there are no extra-high-voltage substations and lines to bring that power ashore and distribute it to consumers, the energy remains trapped. That is why we look so closely at the operator's investments and at the farms' onshore infrastructure, for instance the transformer station near Choczewo, on nearly thirteen hectares, which is the heart of the power export from Baltica 2.

To put it plainly: grid expansion is as critical for Kashubia as the farms themselves.

APS and Eycore have joined the district, counter-drone systems and SAR radars, with a hall announced near Gdynia. What further links in the supply chain and what scale of engineering employment can be expected in the coming quarters?

These companies are a good illustration of what we are after, because each represents a different segment. APS is a subcontractor for the Polish SAN counter-drone system and develops some of the most advanced anti-drone solutions in Europe. That is the hard, defence part of the district: PLN 100 million and a hall near Gdynia.

Eycore is the space component: synthetic aperture radars for satellites, a centre with a clean room, PLN 50 million, and the first satellite is already in orbit. Kongsberg supplies modern armament, combat systems and solutions for uncrewed land and maritime platforms. That alone shows three different axes: uncrewed and counter-drone systems, space and sensors, armament. The result is to be as many as two hundred new jobs for engineers and technical specialists.

What do I expect next? The logic of the supply chain is transparent here. Further links will grow around such investments: microelectronics and components, sensors, communications systems, software and artificial intelligence for radar image analysis, composites and precision machining, propulsion, and finally, and I stress this, service and maintenance. Separately I see a strong offshore component: companies producing elements for offshore wind, such as Grupa Przemysłowa Baltic, which is already a tower supplier and a candidate supplier for the Westinghouse nuclear plant, and which recently filed an application for more than PLN 700 million (around EUR 160 million) of investment in a dual-use direction. And finally the data centres I have already mentioned.

Why do I care so much about service and maintenance? Because that is where the lasting value lies. Let us remember that the purchase cost of equipment is roughly thirty per cent of its price over the whole life cycle. The remaining seventy per cent is maintenance, service, modernisation, training, and it is in that part that competences, jobs and margin remain for decades. I do not want Pomeranian companies to assemble a component and end their role there. I want them to integrate, service, develop and train.

As for the scale of employment: at this moment it is already a thousand new jobs, but that is only the beginning. Ultimately we want a hundred thousand new jobs to appear. Already in the coming quarters it will be above all engineering positions that grow, highly paid and demanding competences whose training we must begin now, not when the halls are ready.

Let us stay with Kongsberg. What does the presence of a global defence group say about the character of the district?

When a group of that class, as the first foreign investor, decides to locate production in Pomerania, and not one but two plants at once, land and maritime, it is a signal to the whole market that this is a place worth being. Others follow Kongsberg, because nobody wants to be left behind.

The profile of that production also matters: it is meant primarily for export, which always benefits the Polish economy. It is important not to build competition for the Polish defence market. The Norwegian involvement also has an allied dimension. Norway has joined this cooperation and signed the Baltic Declaration. Kongsberg's presence is at once an economic contract and an element of building a Baltic defence ecosystem in which allies not only trade, but produce together. For me it is a model example of what Kashubia is meant to be on an international scale.

We produce in Pomerania the tools that Pomerania needs.

The district neighbours the Baltic's critical infrastructure, the wind farms, cables and the LNG terminal, which is increasingly exposed to uncrewed and underwater threats. To what extent can the radar capabilities and counter-UAS systems of the district's companies strengthen protection and situational awareness in these waters?

Kashubia is part of a broader concept of security for the Baltic Sea basin. Acts of sabotage against subsea critical infrastructure or incidents involving uncrewed systems have stopped being a scenario from staff exercises. They are the reality of recent years on the Baltic. And we have an ever denser network of facilities in these waters that need protecting: offshore wind farms, power and telecommunications cables, gas pipelines including Baltic Pipe, and the LNG terminal in Świnoujście. The more of this infrastructure, the larger the area to protect.

And here the district has more to offer than jobs. It has capabilities to offer. The counter-drone systems developed by APS and observation radars, including Eycore's satellite SAR radars, are exactly the technologies that build situational awareness above and below the water. A synthetic aperture radar sees through clouds and at night, regardless of the weather. It is an invaluable, round-the-clock layer of monitoring for a vast sea area. Counter-UAS systems, in turn, answer a threat that five years ago we treated as marginal and that today is one of the most serious.

So the logic is that we produce in Pomerania the tools that Pomerania needs, and more broadly the whole region. A company that builds a radar or a counter-drone system in Gdynia has, a few dozen kilometres away on the Baltic, a real object to protect and a real, demanding customer. That shortens the loop between technology and deployment and raises the quality of both.

I consider this synergy a concrete contribution to the commitments Poland took on in the Baltic Declaration, the first hard document in which the states of the Baltic Sea basin, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Norway, undertook to cooperate, including in the protection of critical infrastructure, both surface and subsea. We will soon be holding an economic follow-up to the Baltic Declaration, and Kashubia will be at its centre.

You mentioned underwater threats. Can the district also offer capabilities at this most difficult level?

It is the most difficult area, because underwater you see least, and that is exactly where the cables and pipelines run. And here uncrewed maritime vessels come back into play. Autonomous surface and underwater platforms are the future of sea area surveillance. They can patrol, conduct reconnaissance, and monitor the seabed and connections continuously, more cheaply and without exposing people. That is exactly the segment we want to develop in the district.

We have companies and universities in Pomerania that can develop sensors, autonomy and data analysis. That is a real foundation on which such a capability can be built, and one of the reasons this industry should stand right here. That is also why we will be building in Gdynia a competence centre for uncrewed platforms in the underwater and surface domains.

Shipyards are one of the district's four pillars. Let us note that the largest modernisation of the Polish Navy in decades is under way in Gdynia and Gdańsk. How does Kashubia fit into this shipbuilding renaissance?

At the PGZ Naval Shipyard in Gdynia, the oldest operating naval shipyard in Poland, working without interruption since 1922, three multi-role frigates of the Miecznik programme are being built, the largest contract in the history of the Polish shipbuilding industry, worth more than PLN 15 billion (around EUR 3.5 billion). The first, ORP Wicher, was launched in August this year; the next two, Burza and Huragan, are already under construction, and the whole trio is to join the fleet in 2029-2031. The same yard is building the rescue ship Ratownik. In Gdańsk, at Remontowa Shipbuilding, Kormoran II mine countermeasures vessels and Delfin signals intelligence ships are being built. And a contract for hydrographic vessels was recently signed, financed already from SAFE funds. Then there is the Orka programme, that is submarines, in which the Swedish offer was selected, with the servicing of these units to take place in Polish yards. These are not plans, this is already happening.

Why is this so important for Kashubia? Because it demonstrates in practice exactly the model I am fighting for across the whole district. Since the start of the Miecznik programme the PGZ Naval Shipyard has doubled its workforce, and the share of Polish suppliers in its modernisation programmes already reaches around forty per cent and is set to grow. More than a hundred companies are involved in Miecznik alone. It is living proof that a large armaments programme can pull hundreds of jobs and a whole chain of domestic subcontractors behind it. The district's task is to make that chain denser and more permanent.

Let me be clear: the Navy's programmes are run by the defence ministry and Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa, they are not formally investments within Kashubia. But the district and those programmes feed on the same things: Pomeranian people, Pomeranian shipyards, Pomeranian research facilities. As the Navy's command says, a safe Baltic means a safe Poland, and energy is moving today from south to north. Kashubia is the economic complement of that same idea. And further orders are on the horizon, such as corvettes for the defence of the Baltic, which will extend this shipbuilding renaissance for years.

The greatest value lies not in a one-off build, but in decades of servicing.

The Kashubia Green Industrial District is a partner of ARMA Forum, which in its new formula of a year-round conference cycle will devote a separate event in Wejherowo to the district. How do you see the role of such a platform in integrating the Pomeranian industrial, research and defence ecosystem and in building domestic local content?

Events like ARMA Forum are not add-ons to the project, they are its connective tissue. Kashubia by definition links three worlds that speak different languages on a daily basis: industry, science and defence, and on top of that local government and finance. These communities have to meet and get to know each other's needs and capabilities, because otherwise each will optimise its own slice and the whole will not come together. The forum provides the space for that: a large defence company gets to know a local subcontractor, a university hears what competences the market really needs, a local government learns what land and what infrastructure an investor expects, and a bank learns what risk it is to finance.

The fact that the forum takes place in Wejherowo has additional significance for me. Wejherowo, together with Rumia and Reda, is the Little Kashubian Tricity, one of the key points on the district's map, where we are counting among other things on locating the Offshore Competence Centre. Given its proximity to the Tricity and the activity of local governments, it is precisely this area that is to become Kashubia's investment hinterland. Meeting here is a signal that the project is not being done over the heads of residents, in offices in Warsaw, but together with the local community. For me, as someone raised in Kashubia, that is very important. That is why Kashubia has been built in social dialogue from the outset. We have even signed a letter of intent on the role of sport and dialogue with residents in implementing the project, because I believe that strategic pro-defence investments must go hand in hand with talking to the people who live next to them. The forum is part of the same philosophy.

And finally local content, the real share of Polish companies in the value chain, begins precisely with such contacts. A contract does not fall from the sky; it is preceded by conversation, trust and the knowledge that there is a partner next door who will deliver a component on time and to quality. The forum builds that knowledge and that trust. That is why I treat it as part of the district's soft infrastructure, as necessary as roads and connections. I am glad that together with Gazeta Morska we are co-creating this platform, because a maritime medium is the natural host of this conversation.

In the context of the SAFE instrument and the Polska Zbrojna programme: how does the district intend to secure the participation of Pomeranian subcontractors in orders so that the local supply chain builds its own competences and margin, rather than remaining merely an executor of orders?

Let us start with scale, because scale makes the difference. Poland is the largest beneficiary of the EU's SAFE instrument. We applied for around EUR 43.7 billion, nearly PLN 200 billion, in favourably priced loans, on the terms at which the European Union borrows, that is almost twice as cheaply as Poland. We assumed that nearly ninety per cent of these funds would go to Polish companies. After the presidential veto of the act implementing SAFE, the government adopted a resolution thanks to which this solution can be used. And the first results are already in: PLN 120 billion (around EUR 28 billion) went to Polish companies in three days. That is more than the previous government contracted in the Polish defence industry in eight years. So we are talking about a stream of orders that the Polish defence industry has never seen, and about some twelve thousand cooperating entities, largely small and medium-sized.

That is also the philosophy we brought to the defence ministry: the hundreds of billions we are devoting to defence must build the Polish economy. I do not want Pomeranian subcontractors to be merely executors of individual orders. I want them to be owners of a piece of technology, to integrate, service and develop, rather than just fulfil an order and wait for the next one. So the first pillar is the deliberate building of subcontractors around large investments, offset and domestic participation, because the purchase cost of equipment is around thirty per cent of the price over the whole life cycle, and the remaining seventy per cent is maintenance, service and modernisation. That is where lasting income lies, and that is what we want to keep in Pomerania.

The second pillar is financing tailored to smaller companies, and here the role of Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego cannot be overstated. BGK has launched a programme of free de minimis guarantees for the defence and dual-use sector: an annual pool of around PLN 5 billion (around EUR 1.15 billion), which with the leverage effect gives around PLN 6.3 billion of financing and can cover as many as seven thousand companies, with a guarantee of up to eighty per cent of the loan for production for defence and up to seventy per cent for dual-use. This solves the fundamental problem of a small company, the lack of hard collateral, and opens the door to commercial credit. Then there is the Security and Defence Fund, of which I am a co-author, of around PLN 26 billion (around EUR 6 billion) shifted to defence from the green urban transition programme within the National Recovery Plan, as well as direct investment and working capital financing from the bank's own resources. Entrepreneurs themselves say plainly what they need: sureties and contract guarantees, access to working capital and investment loans, and people.

As BGK's first vice-president, Professor Marta Postuła, says, there is no security without a competitive economy. I subscribe to that sentence with both hands. A measurable goal for me is an increase in the share of Polish industry in the military's purchases. In 2016-2023 it did not exceed twenty-four per cent, in the last two years it rose to around thirty-five, and after the full implementation of SAFE it will exceed fifty. These are tens of billions of zlotys that can stay here, in Polish companies, including Pomeranian ones.

Hundreds of billions for defence must build the Polish economy.

A large share of orders will be carried out by Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa and the big players. Won't Pomeranian small and medium-sized companies be left as mere spectators in this arrangement?

No, and for me this is a fundamental issue. Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa will indeed be the key contractor for many programmes, and large private companies such as WB Group will play an important role too. But a modern defence industry is not a few great plants, it is a whole ecosystem of suppliers. Somebody has to produce the metal parts, electronics, sensors, software, communications systems, spare parts and service tools. PGZ companies have long had numerous private cooperating partners; around twelve thousand entities work with that group alone. The question is not whether Pomeranian companies will take part, but on what terms.

And here lies the role of the district and the role of the state. First, the deliberate tying of local subcontractors to large investors, whether PGZ and its shipyards or private investors such as Kongsberg, APS and Eycore. Second, financial tools tailored to the smaller scale that we have discussed: BGK's de minimis guarantees, funds, sureties. Without them a small company with good technology falls into the valley of death: it has a prototype, it has competences, but it lacks the capital to leap to series production, and banks treat it as too risky. It is exactly that gap we are closing.

To put it plainly: I want the big players to be partners and customers for Pomeranian companies. A company that supplies a component for a frigate, a counter-drone system or an offshore wind farm has a chance to grow from a subcontractor into a recognisable supplier with its own brand. That does not happen by itself, it requires relationships, financing and predictable rules. But that is precisely the point of the district: that the big money, which will flow anyway, should build a dense fabric of small and medium-sized companies.

Does this potential also have a chance of working for export, or will we remain a recipient of other people's technologies?

I have a clear view here: the goal is to transform Poland from an importer into an exporter of armaments, and Kashubia is meant to help with that. For years we bought off the shelf across the ocean and in Korea, often without offset, without the participation of domestic industry, without our own servicing. That has to change. The SAFE instrument itself provides an interesting export impulse here: armaments produced by Polish companies, state-owned and private, can be bought by other EU states with SAFE funds. So the same mechanism that arms us can open our neighbours' markets to our companies.

Pomerania has natural advantages for this. The Norwegian partner entering the district is not only an investor, it is also a partner in a global chain and a potential bridge to allied markets. APS's counter-drone systems are among the most advanced in Europe; Eycore's radars and space component are technologies for which demand is only growing. These are products with export potential, not only for the domestic market. The Baltic is by nature an international market: all the states of the region have the same problems protecting farms, cables and pipelines.

There is one condition, and I repeat it like a mantra: the value must stay in the country. Exporting a component is good, but exporting whole systems, with Polish know-how, with Polish servicing and modernisation, is what builds a lasting branch of the economy. If Pomeranian companies learn to integrate and service for the needs of our own fleet and our own defence, they will also be able to sell that abroad.

What decides the location of the district in Pomerania specifically? Access to the sea, offshore potential, port infrastructure or the research base of the Tricity? And how does this profile differentiate Kashubia from other initiatives in the country?

What decides it is a combination of several factors that no other region in Poland has at the same time. First, access to the sea and to Baltic infrastructure, because that is what defines the district's specialisation: nuclear and offshore energy, ports and maritime logistics, shipyards and dual-use defence industry, security systems for critical infrastructure. Second, unprecedented energy potential: large wind farms on the Baltic, photovoltaics on land, and the planned nuclear power plant near Choczewo with a capacity of around three gigawatts. Third, the port infrastructure of Gdynia and Gdańsk and what we are only now building: the Red Road, the modernisation of the railways. And fourth, the research base of the Tricity. Cheap green energy is a necessary condition, but it is only the sum of these things that creates a district.

There is also a dimension that cannot be converted into megawatts. This is my home. I come from Kashubia and I say it plainly: Kashubia will be built by Kashubians, by companies that are here and that employ Polish workers, because for us that is security. Silesia once developed industry on the basis of the energy generated there. Where power plants and enormous quantities of energy arose, workplaces were born. Today exactly the same task faces Pomerania and Gdynia.

What differentiates us from other initiatives in the country? Kashubia is first, and it is maritime, it is the one testing the whole model. We are thinking about further districts with their own profiles: Warta in Greater Poland, with hydrogen technologies and small modular reactors; Vistula in Mazovia, with the chemical and energy industries; Galicia in the south, with the aviation industry. Each will be different. But it is Pomerania that has the unique combination of sea, offshore, nuclear and ports, and that is why it is the natural place to pilot the whole concept of industrial districts.

The scale of the project requires a strong personnel base. How is cooperation developing with the research centres of the Tricity, including the Polish Naval Academy, in educating engineers and specialists for the maritime and defence sector?

This is the area where skills will decide success, and about which local government officials speak with one voice: without people there will be no investment. You can bring in the best technology, but if there is nobody to work on it, the hall stands empty. That is why I treat cooperation with universities as a pillar, not a supplement. The Tricity has exceptional advantages here: the Polish Naval Academy with its competences in the maritime and defence fields, Gdańsk University of Technology, the University of Gdańsk, and technology parks around them. It is an environment capable of educating exactly the specialists that APS, Eycore or Kongsberg need, and soon further companies: from uncrewed systems engineering, through electronics and radar signal processing, to marine energy and cybersecurity.

The role of the Polish Naval Academy is special here. It is a university that by its nature links the maritime world with the defence world, that is exactly two pillars of Kashubia. Its graduates, its research facilities and its understanding of the specifics of the Baltic are capital that cannot be built from scratch in a few years. We want the universities of the Tricity to be not only a supplier of people, but also a research and development partner for the district's companies, so that joint projects, spin-offs and implementation work emerge.

There are two concrete lines of action. The first is matching education programmes to the district's real needs, so that a university teaches what will shortly be in demand on the market, not what was needed ten years ago. The second is building specialised competence centres; the Offshore Competence Centre in the Wejherowo area that I mentioned is an example of a place where science, industry and practical training meet under one roof.

The role of local governments is invaluable here, because they are responsible for residential attractiveness, for whether a young engineer will want to stay here, start a family, buy a flat. Talent is not only a diploma; it is also a flat, a kindergarten and a rail connection. That is why we discuss people in parallel with local governments and universities, and why that conversation is taking place now, before the biggest investments start, and not after the fact. Otherwise we will educate excellent engineers who will leave for wherever a flat is easier to find.

What does cooperation with local governments look like?

Let me start with the fact that a Parliamentary Group for the Kashubia Green Industrial District was recently set up, and the project is supported by local government officials at every level, from mayors to the regional marshal. This is not the project of one government or one term, and only that way, above divisions, can it be delivered. A decade means many elections; if Kashubia is to survive, it must be a common good, not somebody's banner. I say this honestly: it is a marathon, not a sprint. But it is a chance that comes to a region once in a hundred years, and that is why I approach it with the utmost seriousness.

Kashubia is sometimes called one of the pillars of the Baltic Shield. What does that mean beyond the local dimension?

It means that Kashubia is not an island. The Baltic Shield is three pillars: the Kashubia Green Industrial District, the Pact for the Security of Poland for Central Pomerania, and the Baltic Declaration. The first provides industry and energy, the second infrastructure and the ability to receive allies, the third an international framework of cooperation among the states of the region. Removing one of these pillars weakens the whole. Kashubia is the economic and industrial heart of this construction.

That is why I say that Kashubia is not only a package of investments, but a way of thinking about security. One in which investments in industry, logistics and new technologies translate directly into the strength of the state. And one that builds that strength together with allies and together with the people of Pomerania. If it succeeds, and I believe it will, it will be a model to repeat in further regions of the country.

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maciej samsonowicz zielony okręg przemysłowy kaszubia kaszubia grupa wb advanced protection systems

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