Prime Minister Donald Tusk has confirmed that a planned “mega-airport” and transport hub in central Poland, a flagship project of the former ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, will go ahead. The decision ends months of uncertainty over the plans following December 2023 change of government.
However, Tusk also accused PiS of wasteful spending on the project and said that the new government would place greater emphasis on developing regional rail, road and air infrastructure to make Poland “one big megalopolis”.
In July last year, when PiS was still in power, a design concept for the Solidarity Transport Hub (CPK) project was unveiled. In October 2023, an international consortium of investment partners, who would contribute up to 8 billion zloty (EUR 1.84 billion) in exchange for a minority stake, was announced.
However, after Tusk’s government came to power, it fired the CEO of CPK and announced that it would conduct an audit before confirming whether and how the project would continue. Some senior figures in the new government had suggested that the planned airport should be abandoned.
But there were also supporters of the project within the ruling camp. Meanwhile in May, a group of leading Polish business figures called on the government not to abandon CPK, which they said could “become a great driving force of the Polish economy”.
Tusk said that before making a decision he had “wanted to have a full picture of what Poland needs and what dreams correspond to these Polish needs, and not whose political orders they should fulfill”.
The prime minister then confirmed that CPK would go ahead.
“We will build the most modern airport in Europe,” he declared.
However, he added that a realistic aim for annual passenger numbers would be 34 million.
When PiS first outlined plans for CPK, it declared an aim of 100 million passengers annually, which would have made it one of the busiest airports in the world. That was later scaled back to an initial target of 40 million with the option to scale up to 50 million, then 65 million and eventually even 100 million.
In his announcement, Tusk said that the CPK project would now place greater emphasis on connecting the whole of Poland to modern transport infrastructure.
“Poland will become one big megalopolis,” said Tusk.
He outlined an aim of making it possible to travel by rail “between the capital, Warsaw, and all major urban centres in 100 minutes or less”.
CPK was always envisioned as a broader transport hub that would include new high-speed rail and road connections, as well as an airport.
Tusk, however, said that the PiS government had failed to put those ideas into practice. He pointed to a planned rail tunnel beneath central Lodz, which was initially supposed to be completed until 2022 but had been hit by construction delays and rising costs.
Speaking alongside Tusk, Maciej Lasek, the government’s plenipotentiary for the CPK project, said that the cost of its air and rail elements would be 131 billion zloty (EUR 30.4 billion), which he said was lower than the 155 billion zloty planned by PiS.
The prime minister also pledged to maintain Poland’s network of smaller regional airports, which some had feared would be overshadowed by CPK.
This, said Tusk, would include “quickly expanding and modernising Modlin” airport to make it a hub for “popular, low-cost airlines” and to better connect it by rail and road to the centre of Warsaw.
Okecie, Warsaw’s main airport, which had been scheduled to close once CPK opened, would also be “urgently modernised and improved”, said Tusk, who noted that the airport at CPK would not be ready until 2032.
Finally, the prime minister also pledged that Poland’s national airline, LOT, would be improved “so that it will become a company more or less on the level of Lufthansa”, Germany’s flag carrier.
Despite Tusk confirming that CPK would go ahead, he faced immediate criticism from his PiS predecessor Mateusz Morawiecki, who accused the government of “rebuilding CPK so that it does not pose a threat to the Germans and Austrians”.
Morawiecki also accused Tusk of returning to his old strategy, from when his PO party previously ruled Poland from 2007 to 2015, of focusing only on the development of large cities. (Notes from Poland)