The End of Momentum: Why Poland Must Rethink Its Future Now
Poland is on the brink of transformative possibility — or irreparable stagnation. After three decades of impressive catch-up growth, driven by EU funds, foreign direct investment, and integration into global value chains — which was preceded by more than a decade of socially brutal transformation — the country is rapidly approaching the limits of its economic model. A system once praised for its pragmatism is now showing signs of structural fatigue. The “golden age”, as economist Marcin Piątkowski once called it in his bestselling book on the Polish economic miracle, is at risk of becoming a missed opportunity unless Polish elites rise to the occasion with bold vision and concrete action.
Poland’s post-accession growth story was built on a transactional “consensus” imposed by neoliberal elites in the 1990s: in exchange for access to Western capital and markets, Poland liberalised its economy in an abrupt, even brutal way. The national labour market was opened and offered a cheap and disciplined workforce — one without safety nets or strong social organisation. As many economists and activists have aptly summed up, Poland was a low-cost ‘assembly economy’ that grew thanks to being useful to others. It became a country full of almost extraterritorial special economic zones (where foreign investors could come and benefit from special treatment) surrounded by underdeveloped suburbs.
It worked — until now.
The signs of exhaustion are clear
EU structural funds, the main development booster — a substitute for bold state interventionism — will all but disappear by 2029, when Poland crosses the threshold of 90% of the EU’s average GDP per capita. At the same time, Poland remains stuck in the role of junior partner in transnational production chains, with limited domestic value added and negligible or even no control over key technologies, and with too little sovereignty to even impose a digital tax on the US tech giants. Worse still, this model has left large parts of the country behind.
As metropolitan centres like Warsaw, Wroclaw, the Tri-City (Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot) and a couple more places grow wealthier and more globalised, the rest of Poland faces depopulation and stagnation. In the end, Polish politicians have cared about Warsaw more than of anything for years. With a few rare exceptions, the policy for the ‘deep Poland’ was to drain these areas of life in order to feed a few metropolises. But when this reservoir dries up, all that remains is demographic collapse.
At the same time, there is no state intervention to prevent this. Forget housing or large-scaled infrastructure projects that could change the situation in smaller towns and cities. High-speed railways are to be developed to connect biggest cities. Outside of them, quality of life and prospects are stagnating or deteriorating. At the same time, new forms of power and influence are left to their own devices, without the institutions of the state to oppose them. Digital independence is a fiction, as billions flow annually to Big Tech companies through advertising and platform services.
The risk is clear: without rethinking its development paradigm, Poland will be trapped — too rich to get help, too structurally dependent to thrive on its own.
Different Perspectives
Outside of the political circles, there is a diagnosis. Dr. Marcin Piątkowski, working for the World Bank, is adamant that “investments, investments, investments” are vital. He believes that infrastructure megaprojects such as Central Communication Port, nuclear energy, and infrastructure expansion are not just important for GDP growth, but also for strategic convergence with Germany and France. “We have a mental blockade, not a financial one,” he insists. As he emphasizes, Poland requires ambition, backed by a clear roadmap and a bold narrative of what the national interest means today.
Professor Piotr Wachowiak is another economist who focuses on structural weaknesses. These include a labour market strangled by shortages of skilled workers and a chronically underperforming investment rate. For Wachowiak, a robust migration policy is not a political compromise — it is an economic necessity. Without the inflow of skilled migrants who can quickly adapt to Polish culture and work standards, the Polish economy will soon face a lack the human capital. He emphasises the importance of regulatory certainty for private investors and a national strategy that combines energy transformation, defence capacity, and technological modernisation — all of them missing thanks to the culture of not-interventionism.
At the same time, echoing the long-overlooked insights of Michał Kalecki, Rafał Woś reminds us that it was rising wages, not austerity or the mythical trickle-down policies — that fuelled Poland’s success over the past two decades.
Wage-led growth, once dismissed as utopian or anachronistic, proved remarkably effective in the Polish context. Real wages rose by more than 25%, even during the inflationary years of 2015-2022. Growth was not only quantitative, but also redistributive — especially for the lowest paid.
For Woś, the lesson is clear: increasing purchasing power is not a threat to competitiveness; it is the basis for demand and long-term prosperity.
Yet perhaps the most system-oriented vision comes from Jan Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski, who warns that without a new social infrastructure, Poland will simply implode under the weight of its contradictions: demographic collapse, social disintegration, and metropolitan overconcentration. His answer is not another industrial megaproject, but a reinvention of the institutional ecosystem: citizen-owned energy cooperatives, digital commons, and democratic enterprises capable of building long-term trust and coordination. “We don’t need a new Polish matrix,” he writes, “but a new mental operating system—for the entire community.”
One Diagnosis
What unites these thinkers is a shared awareness that time is running out. By most estimates, Poland has five years to develop and implement a new model before the last EU funds run out and geopolitical pressures mount. And yet, instead of strategic mobilisation, we are faced with technocratic hesitation.
The current government — competent and centrist — is sending mixed signals. Instead of articulating a national development plan, it is burying infrastructure projects in audits and delays. It is curtailing investment ambitions while contemplating revenue-reducing reforms such as raising the tax-free threshold, reducing capital gains tax, and introducing healthcare fee cuts.
The result is paralysis. Poland neither rejects nor replaces its old model. It is not de-industrialising, but it is not re-industrialising. It is drifting, hoping that momentum will replace strategy.
Meanwhile, the international context is changing rapidly. The world economy is fragmenting into competing blocs. Industrial policy is back. Friendshoring, not free trade, defines the new logic of value chains. Without its own industrial and technological policy, Poland risks becoming the dependent periphery, subordinate either to Germany or to the US — with little agency and even less leverage.
Call for Vision
This is no longer sustainable. Poland’s long-term prosperity — and its role in shaping a sovereign European future — depends above all on one factor: the willingness of its political, business and intellectual elites to think long-term and take strategic risks.
This requires rejecting the false dichotomy between liberal technocracy and nationalist improvisation. It requires building a new consensus around five pillars: robust public investment, strategic innovation policies, socially embedded institutions, regulated but open migration, and a new democratic economy based on trust rather than extraction.
It also requires clarity. As Pia̧tkowski urged: “Mr Prime Minister, please show our fellow citizens the Poland we want our children and grandchildren to live in.” This Poland will not be built by inertia, nor will it survive on residual EU solidarity. It will have to be built through vision, effort and institutional imagination.
Poland of today is not poor, neither helpless. It is not peripheral, but it is unprepared. Without a national strategy for the post-2029 era, it will fall prey to the same stagnation that afflicts many middle-income economies, mistaking past momentum for future inevitability.
The golden age is not over. But whether it continues — or becomes a historical parenthesis — depends entirely on what we do next.
This is a moment that demands courage. Not the courage to preserve what is, but the courage to invent what could be.
Cover photo: Warsaw Central train station (source).
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