Vienna Three million Ukrainians have arrived in Poland in the last nine weeks. Even if some move on and most hope to return quickly, the Polish population has briefly grown by eight percent. That would be like more than 6.5 million people moving to Germany at once. They all need to be cared for, accommodated and employed.
The naturalness, generosity and solidarity with which Poland is helping Ukraine is remarkable. The two countries are culturally and linguistically close, but the many conflicts of the 20th century repeatedly strained relations. Now she combines the experience of the existential threat from Russia gained from this very past. The front-line state, Poland and the Baltic states, sees supporting Ukraine in the fight as life insurance.
Warsaw has given the refugees unbureaucratic residence permits for 18 months, giving them access to social benefits and educational opportunities. Tens of thousands of private individuals took in the Ukrainian women and their children – who make up more than 90 percent of the refugees – for a small compensation from the government. Many of these citizens belong to the existing Ukrainian diaspora.
In addition, there is state military aid for Ukraine amounting to the equivalent of around 1.66 billion euros. Poland has been supplying heavy weapons since the beginning of the war, including at least 240 Warsaw Pact-era tanks, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Polish government is pleased that large Western European countries are now following suit.
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Russia’s aggression is accelerating Poland’s rearmament: in March, the NATO member country decided to increase military spending to three percent of gross domestic product. A tens-billion dollar modernization of the army, primarily through American weapons, has been underway for years.
The illusions about a purely economic partnership with Moscow, which were widespread in Germany, Austria and Hungary until recently, have always been met with skepticism in Poland. After the Georgian war in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea, the country began to emancipate itself from Russia in terms of energy policy, for example through the LNG terminal in Swinemünde, which went into operation in 2015, or the Baltic Pipeline, which will soon go into operation.
Poland is therefore not unprepared for the Kremlin’s delivery stop for natural gas – even though it gets almost half of its requirements from the east. The gas storage facilities are three-quarters full, and Warsaw wanted to become completely independent from Russia by the end of the year anyway. This comparatively more robust position allows the government to aggressively demand an energy embargo from the EU and to criticize states that are more willing to compromise.
But supporting Ukraine comes at a cost. The decoupling of Russian energy remains a Herculean task under great time pressure. At the same time, the war in the neighboring country has accelerated inflation, which is forecast to exceed 12 percent in April, primarily due to higher energy costs. After the war began, petrol had to be rationed at times, and even in Warsaw many ATMs were empty well into March.
However, these are only the harbingers of the challenges that Poland is facing. The protracted war means Ukrainians are likely to stay longer — and that their host country needs a move away from the organized chaos that has characterized crisis management so far. The enormous additional demand for living space has ensured that the vacancy rate in larger cities has fallen by half.
Integration into the labor market is also complicated: the economy can certainly use the additional forces. But because men of military age stayed in Ukraine, the women are often alone with their children, making it more difficult to get a job.
Tens of thousands of teachers needed
In the schools, the leader of the largest teachers’ union warned of an “education tsunami” given the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian students who are mostly integrated into classes without language preparatory courses. He calls for 50,000 new teachers, although it is unclear where these will come from.
Poland’s government puts the costs of dealing with the refugee movements to date at more than two billion euros. However, the Brussels think tank Bruegel expects the number to increase tenfold over the course of this year.
The European Union has made it clear that it wants to provide financial support to Poland and other countries in the region that are taking in many refugees. So far, the EU has released 17 billion euros in funds.
Nevertheless, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki complained in a recent interview that his country had not received “a cent” from Brussels. That’s an exaggeration, but Morawiecki isn’t the only one complaining that past aid has been insufficient.
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The funds are flowing extremely slowly, it is also said from the Czech Republic, and from pots that can only be tapped with great bureaucratic effort. The frontline states, on the other hand, are demanding generous additional funds and point to the six billion euros that Turkey received during the last refugee crisis.
The tug-of-war between Warsaw and the EU is made even more complicated by the fact that Brussels is blocking 30 billion euros from the Corona recovery fund because of the controversial Polish judicial reforms. The more moderate forces in Poland’s government and President Andrzej Duda, as well as the politicians in the European Commission, believe that in view of the war a pragmatic solution to the bitter dispute over the rule of law would be in the interests of both sides.
The media therefore reported on the possibility of a compromise: Poland’s parliament would agree to Duda’s proposal to abolish the particularly controversial disciplinary chambers in the courts. In return, Brussels is putting more far-reaching demands, such as the resignation of the judges who have been illegally appointed in recent years, on the back burner.
However, more than two months have passed since the beginning of the war and little has happened. Duda’s initiative remains blocked in Warsaw because of fierce resistance from radical nationalists in government and deep rifts with the opposition. Accordingly, the EU Commission remains non-binding. With the increasing time pressure, the nervousness in Warsaw is increasing – and the danger that Europe will get tangled up in quarrels again instead of demonstrating unity in an existential crisis.
More: Toughness against Russia: What Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are doing differently