The argument was rehearsed, even before the start of the raging campaign for the legislative elections scheduled for Sunday, October 15, during a publicized picnic, on July 8, in the town of Pultusk, not far from Warsaw. “Today, our gross domestic product [PIB] per capita equals 80% of the European Union average (…) And all this because social benefits are very extensive in Poland”, exclaimed Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, in power since 2015. “Did we think a dozen years ago that we would approach Western European countries so quickly in terms of per capita income? »he continued, on July 30, during a new picnic which took place, this time, in the village of Polajewo, in the West.
The data is real, and tangible for the Poles: the country continues to catch up with its neighbors. When Poland joined the European Union (EU) in 2004, it was one of the least wealthy member states. Its GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was two times lower than the community average. Only, among the ten countries entering at the same time, Lithuania and Latvia closed the bench. Today, the country has exceeded the standard of living of Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Hungary and is now close behind Spain.
Poland is at the end of its “glorious twenty”, since joining the EU, and it is up to the national conservatives of PiS, in power since 2015, to reap the benefits since the GDP has increased by 32% between 2015 and 2023 and unemployment has been halved to now reach 5%. “Poland began by catching up with Western Europe since its transition to a market economy. In 1990, our GDP per capita was 30% of Germany’s; At the moment, we are approaching 70%, but this was done in thirty years and not in eight”, underlines economist Witold Orlowski, professor at Vistula University in Warsaw.
The important role of European funds
“The other Central European countries experienced the same phenomenon and we would have achieved the same result in any case, more or less quickly, with another government and other policies”, puts Hanna Cichy, senior economist at Polityka Insight, an analysis center located in Warsaw, into perspective. European funds played a role. According to the ING bank, cohesion funds for 2024 will represent 2% of Polish GDP. “They were very important in creating infrastructure without which investments would undoubtedly not take place”, says Witold Orlowski. A data passed over in silence by the PiS.
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