Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz’s implied plans to deport draft-eligible Ukrainian men could be the straw that breaks Poland’s back and pushes it into recession. Preliminary government statistics from February showed that GDP growth over the past year was just 0.2% compared to 2022’s level of 5.3%. Unemployment was only 5.3% in March though and 33% of the 525 employers surveyed by a reputable staffing firm in October said that they planned to hire in the first quarter of 2024.
The abovementioned hyperlinked report about last year’s measly GDP growth rate attributed it to inflation, which might become more manageable depending on the new coalition government’s policies, while the other statistics suggest a pressing need for more labor on the market. The state insurance fund advised last summer that Poland needs two million foreign workers in the next decade, or 200,000 a year till then, to maintain the current working-retired ratio after the birth rate plummeted 11% last year.
As it just so happens, Poland granted temporary refugee protection status to 950,000 Ukrainians since February 2022, an estimated one-fifth of whom are men according to the National Bank of Poland. That amounts to nearly the 200,000 foreign workers that Poland needs every year, who might now flee for Germany in order to avoid being forcibly deported to the front lines. That neighboring country’s Minister of Justice declared last December that it wouldn’t apply such a policy against draft-dodgers.
The Berlin Senate also told Deutsche Welle last week that Ukrainians can stay in the capital without a valid passport, though the outlet also noted that “All issues related to the stay of foreigners in Germany belong to the competence of the regional authorities”, so the policy might differ elsewhere. Nevertheless, the point is that draft-eligible Ukrainian men in Poland know that they won’t be sent to their doom if they simply move to Germany, which is courting foreign labor from all across the world.
It was perhaps after realizing the self-inflicted blow that the Defense Minister risked dealing to Poland’s already fragile economy that Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski told national media shortly after that his country won’t deport those Ukrainians with expired documents. Be that as it may, many Ukrainian men might not want to risk their lives amidst these mixed signals, and those unmarried women who moved to Poland might relocate too in order to have a better chance of finding a Ukrainian husband one day.
Ukrainians can pick up Polish a lot easier than any other migrants apart from Belarusians, the latter of whom don’t have anywhere near as large of a presence on the labor market, which is why the state prefers hosting them to meet its labor needs over importing civilizationally dissimilar migrants. To be sure, they’re also recruiting workers from the Global South too, but that policy risks replicating the socio-political problems that Western Europe has already experienced over the past few decades.
By spooking Ukrainians through its implied plan to deport draft-eligible men, Poland also inadvertently risks exacerbating the trend of worsening mutual perceptions between their people, which readers can learn more about by reading the review of these surveys from Poland in March and Ukraine in April. Accordingly, it might become less likely than ever that Ukrainians – whether refugees, draft-dodgers, or economic migrants – consider moving to Poland, with many instead preferring Germany for good reason.
Poland’s Ukrainian labor loss will be Germany’s gain, which represents another way in which the former has become indispensable to fueling the latter’s superpower trajectory that was described here in mid-March. As Poland’s economy risks stagnation and potential decline if a recession soon follows the flight of nearly 200,00 draft-eligible Ukrainian men, not to mention other Ukrainians’ fear of moving there and consequently unbridgeable labor market gaps, Germany’s stands to fare comparatively better.
Poland’s growing labor shortage will hamstring its companies’ growth, thus creating more inroads for German ones in that market than they already have. If Poland stops growing, then this will also end the attempted restoration of its regional leadership that was begun under the previous government, which would lead to an even greater surge of German influence in Central & Eastern Europe. Left unchecked, Germany could become a superpower within a generation or less, and all without firing a shot.
