France and Poland signed a friendship and cooperation treaty containing a bilateral security clause, deepening ties between two European Union and NATO members amid the continuing war in Ukraine. President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Donald Tusk concluded the agreement in Nancy, in eastern France.
Under the text reported by France 24, each state promises to assist the other if its territory is subjected to armed aggression. The available language specifies that such help can extend to military measures. The provision creates a direct commitment between Paris and Warsaw, adding a national framework alongside the collective arrangements already available through the two countries' alliances.
Macron stressed that the accord was designed to strengthen, rather than displace, the protections of NATO and the European Union. That distinction places the new bilateral pledge inside the wider European security system instead of presenting it as an alternative defence structure. Tusk described the provision as a mutual guarantee addressing what the partners would do if one of them came under attack.
The agreement belongs to a broader French practice of formal partnerships with major European neighbours. France 24 noted that Paris had previously concluded comparable treaties with Germany, Italy and Spain. The Polish accord gives Warsaw an additional institutional link with a nuclear-armed European ally at a time when governments across the region were reassessing military readiness and long-term support for Ukraine. The supplied evidence did not describe operational plans, force levels or an automatic deployment mechanism, so the practical implementation of military assistance was not specified.
The signing came one day after commemorations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in Europe and against the backdrop of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. During the Nancy appearance, Macron criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin's portrayal of national support for the war. The French leader argued that Moscow's conduct and rhetoric showed Putin remained committed to continued fighting rather than peace.
Macron also confirmed that France would participate the following day in a Ukraine meeting involving the group commonly called the coalition of the willing. That initiative and the new Polish treaty were separate, but both reflected France's effort to coordinate European security policy around the consequences of the conflict.
For Poland, which borders Ukraine and has emphasized the threat from Russia, the document formalized another layer of cooperation with a key western European partner. For France, it broadened a network of bilateral relationships intended to reinforce continental coordination. The central immediate result was legal and political: both governments publicly committed themselves to mutual aid, potentially including armed support, while affirming that NATO and EU responsibilities remained fully in force.
