About 10 years ago, backlash against an influx of Eastern European immigrants – mainly from Poland – helped propel Brexit, the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union. (That, in turn, led thousands of Poles to leave the U.K.)
A little more than 10 days ago, The London Times published a guide for citizens of the U.K. about picking up their lives and moving … to Poland! “With a lower cost of living and a booming tech industry, [Poland] is calling to many Brits,” the Times stated.
This turnaround highlights how economic progress in the formerly communist nation has taken place side by side with growth in democratic values and institutions that reward individual effort and innovation.
“Poland … stands as one of history’s most remarkable examples of how embracing democratic institutions and a free-market economy can radically transform a nation and propel it [to] rapid development,” the Atlantic Council noted in a report last year. The document cited “three foundational pillars of a free society – rule of law, democracy, and [a] market economy” – as contributing to Poland’s ability to thrive.
These pillars are cemented in Poland’s history of resisting and overthrowing decades of communist rule in the late 1980s, when citizens lacked basic foods as well as freedoms.
Today, 85% of Poles say that “living in a democratically governed country is definitely important,” according to a survey conducted last month by the College of Eastern Europe in Wrocław. Most respondents, the report said, displayed a “reverence and respect for democracy,” pointing to aspects such as freedom of speech and expression, the ability to make decisions about their own lives, and the influence they can have on society and politics.
Seeking to join the European Union (which it did in 2004), Poland has built frameworks for civil liberty and business, including an independent judiciary, banking regulations, and an anti-monopoly agency. Its economy has grown 3.8% annually and combines agriculture, manufacturing, finance, tech, and services. It is now among the world’s 20 largest economies, having recently displaced Switzerland from that group.
The Polish people’s commitment to political and economic openness is notable, in a context of growing right-wing nationalism at home and the war raging along its eastern border. Poland has taken in more than 1 million refugees since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But it has turned that to an advantage by tapping their skills to increase both the workforce and the tax base.
As it confronts a shrinking and aging population, Poland is fortunate that skilled citizens wish to return home from the United States and Western Europe, and those in the country already don’t want to leave.
“Poland has … so many opportunities for development, that of course I am staying,” a young graduate student told The Associated Press this month. “Poland is promising.”
