Poland has positioned itself as a standout example of post-communist economic transformation, with its economy now ranked among the world’s largest and set to be showcased at a Group of 20 meeting later this year. The Associated Press reported that Poland’s output has grown to more than $1 trillion a year and that the country has moved past Switzerland to become the world’s 20th-largest economy. The account presents the rise as a shift from shortages and low wages in the decades after communism ended to steadier growth tied to European integration.
The report places the economic story inside everyday life through people such as Joanna Kowalska, an engineer in Poznan who returned after five years in the United States. Kowalska, who works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, said she is “ahead of the United States in so many areas,” adding that she was drawn back to Poland in part by rapid developments in artificial intelligence. She described her work as part of building an “artificial intelligence factory” in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, and she said the project is linked to an EU program that finances quantum computers across Europe.
For the scale of the change, the AP report cited International Monetary Fund figures adjusted for Poland’s lower cost of living. It said Poland’s per-capita GDP rose to $55,340 in 2025, or 85% of the EU average, compared with $6,730 in 1990, or 38% of the EU average. The report also said Poland’s economy has grown at an average 3.8% a year since joining the EU in 2004, outpacing an EU average of 1.8% over the same span.
The AP story also described why economists say the transformation was not driven by a single factor. Marcin Piątkowski of Warsaw’s Kozminski University, who authored a book on Poland’s economic rise, pointed to building a stronger institutional framework for business, including independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and regulation aimed at preventing troubled banks from choking off credit. He said those elements helped prevent the economy from being “hijacked” by corrupt practices and oligarchs in the way he described as happening elsewhere in the post-Communist world.
The report further attributed growth to EU support and the broader direction of policy consensus toward EU membership. It said Poland benefited from billions of euros in EU aid before and after joining the bloc in 2004 and gained access to the EU’s single market. Piątkowski said the long-term goal of EU entry was broadly shared across the political spectrum and helped Poland “download[] the institutions and the rules of the game,” along with cultural norms that he said the West developed over centuries.
To illustrate how those broad changes can show up in business, the report highlighted Solaris, an electric bus manufacturer founded in Poznan in 1996 by Krzysztof Olszewski. It described Solaris as one of Europe’s leading makers of electric buses with a market share of around 15%. Economist Katarzyna Szarzec, at the Poznan University of Economics and Business, said early permissions for small workshops created what she called “enclaves of private entrepreneurship,” including by Olszewski, who initially used spare parts from West Germany to fix cars.
The AP account said that later EU membership helped Solaris expand, including through credibility and access to the wider European market with the free movement of goods, services and people. It quoted Mateusz Figaszewski, responsible for institutional relations, describing the 2004 EU entry as giving the company that market access. The report also said Solaris made a “risky decision” in 2011 to begin producing electric buses, when few companies in Europe were experimenting with the technology, and Figaszewski said the move aimed to achieve technological leadership ahead of the market.
Despite the growth narrative, the report said Poland still faces challenges, including demographic pressures from a low birth rate and an aging society. It reported that average wages remain lower than the EU average and that while small and medium enterprises have flourished, few have become global brands. Poznan Mayor Jacek Jaśkowiak framed domestic innovation as a “third wave” in the country’s post-socialist development, describing an earlier period when foreign countries opened factories in Poland in the early 1990s and a later phase when Western firms added more advanced operations.
Jaśkowiak and the Poznan economist Szarzec also pointed to priorities beyond growth, including investing in universities and addressing gaps between urban and rural areas. Szarzec’s students, the report said, argued for steps to reduce inequalities, make housing affordable, and support young people starting families. The AP account also raised the role of immigrants in the context of population aging, saying students argued that immigrants, including millions of Ukrainians who fled Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, contribute to economic development.
At the end of the report, students’ comments underscored a personal stake in the direction of the economy. Kazimierz Falak, a 27-year-old graduate student described in the article, said he would stay in Poland because it offered “so many opportunities for development,” calling it “promising.” The Associated Press said the event at the Group of 20 summit is largely symbolic, but it described the invitation as reflecting a measurable economic shift that supporters say Poland achieved through institutions, EU integration and entrepreneurship—while the country continues to weigh the next set of pressures.
Byline: David McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany.