Poland is facing new problems due to large-scale emigration of skilled people, with many going to Ireland. Can it persuade them to return in the years ahead, asks Piotr Kaczynski
Up to two million Poles have left their country since the 2004 EU enlargement. The most popular destinations are, so far, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Who leaves? Why do they leave? Will they come back?
The number of unemployed in Poland exceeds 16 per cent. It was even higher in 2004, with 20 per cent of the working population officially jobless. Yet only a few unemployed leave the country to work abroad. The most numerous migrants are young, dynamic, skilled and educated Poles. Normally they should have no problems finding a job in Poland. But if you can earn five or 10 times more abroad, why bother working at home? Working in a foreign country brings many new opportunities. Poles working abroad improve their language skills, gain new experiences, know-how and contacts, all of which can be useful in their future careers.
Specialists of every sort leave the country, too. Teachers, IT people, doctors, nurses, plumbers, engineers, construction workers, university professors, hairdressers - even lifeguards during the hot summer - are leaving Poland.
Sometimes consequences of their emigration became disastrous. In Kielce, a city of 200,000 inhabitants, the only doctor experienced in clearing air-passages of children left for Scotland. Training another one will take a few weeks; meanwhile lives are endangered.
Polish business is booming, with exports growing on average 20 per cent a year since the accession. Yet Polish companies face a new dilemma. In the Slupsk region of northwest Poland, where unemployment exceeds 30 per cent, companies have major difficulties finding new employees.
With the new EU budget 2007-2013 there will be a massive influx of EU money into Poland. The country should become the biggest beneficiary of the EU cohesion and regional policies. Yet those funds are in danger. Local governments across the country lack engineers to plan their investments, construction companies lack workers who would build the roads, apartments and all the other facilities planned in the national development plan for 2007-2013.
Doctors can earn 10 times more abroad than in Poland for shorter working hours. Some of the recent doctors' protests featured the slogan, "We want to live and work here", not abroad. They feel offended by the wages offered to them in Poland.
A recent OECD report stated that Poles earn, on average, six times less than in western European countries. They also work 20 per cent more than in western Europe. The same report says that Polish wages until recently grew very slowly, but they will have to speed up. In some instances this is already happening. In Opole, a city of 100,000 people in southwest Poland, supermarket workers are offered more than in Warsaw. In Slupsk, car mechanics can earn more than €500 a week net, far more than a few years ago.
The current outflow of young, educated, dynamic people is not a brain drain. Not yet. Most sociologists agree that most of them will come back at some point. They will come back with money, contacts and know-how gained in the West. They will invest in their own businesses and offer much to the process of modernisation of Poland. After all, there is no reason why they would not come back. Wroclaw, Poland's fourth biggest city, is a very dynamic place with many new investment initiatives. Recently it started a campaign in the UK with the message "Come back!". Up to 2008 there will be some 30,000 new posts created in Wroclaw and the city council fears there will be no one to fill them.
There are also fears that those who are successfully developing careers abroad will have no incentive to come back. Would they really be interested in exchanging their pro-European, prosperous, highly-developed neighbourhoods (with low crime rates) for bureaucratic obstacles, underdeveloped towns and cities with backward-looking government in office? In short, what will be the incentive for Poles to come back?
The incentive must come from inside Poland itself. The three million army of unemployed has shrunk by half a million and will continue to get smaller. The above mentioned OECD report projects that each year there will be 300,000 new jobs created in Poland. With the baby-boomers retiring in numbers in the next few years, and fewer entering the labour market, the situation will, eventually, stabilise. With lower unemployment, higher wages, and more EU money inflow into the Polish economy (up to 4 per cent of the GDP), there will be even greater economic growth, which is already exceeding 5 per cent a year. At some point Poland will grow to be a very attractive place not only to invest, but also to live. This attractiveness can become an incentive for Poles and non-Poles to come and live in Poland.
However, the picture is not flawless. Spain had José María Aznar, who within a decade turned the country into one of the most economically dynamic in Europe. There is no Polish Aznar to be seen in the domestic political arena in Poland.
Piotr Kaczynski is a political analyst in Poland's Institute of Public Affairs. He is also a co-founder of the European Perspectives Group