How Poland went from post-Communist wreck to one of the world's 20 biggest economies

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POZNAN, Poland (AP) — A generation ago, Poland rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned. Today its economy has edged past Switzerland to become the world’s 20th largest with over $1 trillion in annual output.

It’s a historic leap from the post-Communist ruins of 1989-90 to today's European growth champion that economists say has lessons on how to bring prosperity to ordinary people — and that the Trump administration says should be recognized by Poland's presence at a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies later this year.

The transformation is reflected in people like Joanna Kowalska, an engineer from Poznan, a town of half a million people midway between Berlin and Warsaw. She returned home after five years in the U.S.

“I get asked often if I’m missing something by coming back to Poland, and, to be honest, I feel it’s the other way around,” Kowalska said. “We are ahead of the United States in so many areas.”

Kowalska works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing the first artificial intelligence factory in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, one of 10 on the continent financed by a European Union program.

Kowalska worked for Microsoft in the U.S. after graduating from the Poznan University of Technology in a job she saw as a “dream come true.”

But she missed having a “sense of mission," she said.

“Especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, the technology started developing so rapidly in Poland,” Kowalska added. “So it was very tempting to come back.”

The guest invitation to the G20 summit is mostly symbolic; no guest country has been promoted to full member since the original G20 met at the finance minister level in 1999, and that would take a consensus decision of all the members. Moreover, the original countries were chosen not just by GDP rank, but by their “systemic significance” in the global economy.

But the gesture reflects a statistical truth: In 35 years — a little less than one person's working lifetime — Poland’s per capita gross domestic product rose to $55,340 in 2025, or 85% of the EU average. That's up from $6,730 in 1990, or 38% of the EU average and now roughly equal to Japan’s $52,039, according to International Monetary Fund figures measured in today's dollars and adjusted for Poland’s lower cost of living.

Poland’s economy has grown an average 3.8% a year since joining the EU in 2004, easily beating the European average of 1.8%.

It wasn't simply one factor that helped Poland break out of the poverty trap, says Marcin Piątkowski of Warsaw’s Kozminski University and author of a book on the country’s economic rise.

One of the most important factors was rapidly building a strong institutional framework for business, he said. That included independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit.

As a result, the economy wasn’t hijacked by corrupt practices and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-Communist world.

Poland also benefited from billions of euros in EU aid, both before and after it joined the bloc in 2004 and gained access to its huge single market.

Above all, there was the broad consensus, from across the country's political spectrum, that Poland’s long-term goal was joining the EU.

“Poles knew where they were going,” Piątkowski said. “Poland downloaded the institutions and the rules of the game, and even some cultural norms that the West spent 500 years developing.”

As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.

“Young Poles are, for instance, better educated than young Germans,” Piatkowski said, but earn half what Germans do. That’s “an unbeatable combination” for attracting investors, he said.

Solaris, a company founded in 1996 in Poznan by Krzysztof Olszewski, is one of the leading manufacturers of electric buses in Europe with a market share of around 15%. Its story shows one hallmark of Poland’s success: entrepreneurship, or the willingness to take risks and build something new.

Educated as an engineer under the Communist government, Olszewski opened a car repair shop where he used spare parts from West Germany to fix Polish cars. While most enterprises were nationalized, authorities gave permission to small-scale private workshops like his to operate, according to Katarzyna Szarzec, an economist at the Poznan University of Economics and Business. “These were enclaves of private entrepreneurship," she said.

In 1996, Olszewski opened a subsidiary of the German bus company Neoplan and started producing for the Polish market.

“Poland’s entry to the EU in 2004 gave us credibility and access to a vast, open European market with the free movement of goods, services and people,” said Mateusz Figaszewski, responsible for institutional relations.

Then came a risky decision to start producing electric buses in 2011, a time when few in Europe were experimenting with the technology. Figaszewski said larger companies in the West had more to lose if switching to electric vehicles didn't work out. "It became an opportunity to achieve technological leadership ahead of the market," he said.

Challenges still remain for Poland. Due to a low birth rate and an aging society, fewer workers will be able to support retirees. Average wages are lower than the EU average. While small and medium enterprises flourish, few have become global brands.

Poznan Mayor Jacek Jaśkowiak sees domestic innovation as a third wave in Poland’s postsocialist economic development. In the first wave, foreign countries opened factories in Poland in the early 1990s, taking advantage of a skilled local population.

Around the turn of the millennium, he said, Western companies brought more advanced branches, including finance, IT and engineering.

“Now it’s the time to start such sophisticated activities here,” Jaśkowiak says, adding that one of his main priorities is investing in universities.

“There is still much to do when it comes to innovation and technological progress,” added Szarzec, the Poznan economist. “But we keep climbing up on that ladder of added value. We're no longer just a supplier of spare parts.”

Szarzec's students say more needs to be done to reduce urban-rural inequalities, make housing affordable and support young people starting families. They say Poles need to acknowledge that immigrants, such as the millions of Ukrainians who fled the Russian invasion in 2022, contribute to economic development in an aging population.

"Poland has such a dynamic economy, with so many opportunities for development, that of course I am staying," said Kazimierz Falak, 27, one of Szarzec's graduate students. “Poland is promising.”

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McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany.