Poland Invited to Join NATO: 25th Anniversary

January 29, 2024 marks 25 years since NATO Secretary General Javier Solana sent official invitations to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg praised Poland’s commitment to the Alliance and its support to Ukraine, during a visit by President Andrzej Duda to NATO Headquarters on February 15, 2023. He noted Poland’s significant contribution to the NATO alliance, saying “You host one of NATO’s battlegroups, you spend well over 2% of your GDP on defence, and invest in new modern capabilities.”

The Secretary General highlighted that NATO’s strong presence in Poland helps to deter aggression: “Together, we send a clear message, so there can be no room for miscalculation in Moscow. NATO will defend every inch of Poland. And of the whole Allied territory.”

Poland has been the most strategically important country on NATO’s eastern flank since it joined in 1999.

With Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine two years ago on February 24, 2022, Poland’s role has become even more important, as it shares a 330-mile border with the Ukraine. Poland has been providing a strategic military staging area and conduit for Western weapons to reach the Ukraine, as well as refuge and assistance to more than two million Ukrainian civilians fleeing the war.

Click here for a timeline of Poland’s acceptance into NATO, a process which began in early 1992 following official dissolution of the communist Warsaw Pact military alliance in July 1991.