Poland is now among the world’s 20 largest economies. How did it happen?

A generation ago, Poland rationed sugar and flour while its citizens earned one-tenth what West Germans did. Today, the nation’s economy has surpassed Switzerland to become the world’s 20th largest, with annual output exceeding $1 trillion—a remarkable transformation that economists say offers valuable lessons in bringing prosperity to ordinary people.

The Trump administration has proposed acknowledging this economic miracle by inviting Poland to join this year’s Group of 20 summit of leading economies.

The transformation is evident in the experience of people like Joanna Kowalska, an engineer from Poznan, a city of half a million located between Berlin and Warsaw. After five years working for Microsoft in the United States, she chose to return to her homeland.

“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 now works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing Poland’s first artificial intelligence factory and integrating it with a quantum computer—one of ten such facilities in Europe funded by the European Union.

While her position at Microsoft had been a “dream come true” after graduating from the Poznan University of Technology, she felt something was missing. “Especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, the technology started developing so rapidly in Poland,” she explained. “It was very tempting to come back.”

This economic success story didn’t happen by accident. In just 35 years—less than one person’s working lifetime—Poland’s per capita gross domestic product soared to $55,340 in 2025, reaching 85% of the EU average. That’s up from $6,730 in 1990, when it stood at just 38% of the EU average. Today, Poland’s per capita GDP roughly equals Japan’s $52,039, according to IMF figures adjusted for Poland’s lower cost of living.

Since joining the EU in 2004, Poland’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of 3.8%, easily outpacing the European average of 1.8%.

Marcin Piątkowski of Warsaw’s Kozminski University and author of a book on the country’s economic rise says multiple factors helped Poland escape poverty. A crucial element was quickly building a strong institutional framework for business, including independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and robust banking regulations to maintain credit flow.

These measures prevented the economy from falling prey to corruption and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-Communist world. Poland also benefited from billions in EU aid, both before and after joining the bloc in 2004, gaining access to Europe’s massive single market.

Critical to this transformation was the broad political consensus that EU membership represented Poland’s long-term goal. “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.”

Despite its oppressive nature, communism inadvertently contributed by dismantling old social barriers and opening higher education to factory workers and farmers previously denied such opportunities. The post-Communist education boom means half of young Poles now hold university degrees.

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

The story of Solaris, a leading European electric bus manufacturer founded in Poznan in 1996, exemplifies Poland’s entrepreneurial spirit. Founder Krzysztof Olszewski, an engineer educated under the Communist government, started with a car repair shop using West German parts to fix Polish vehicles. Though most enterprises were nationalized, small private workshops like his were permitted.

In 1996, Olszewski established a subsidiary of German bus company Neoplan to produce 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, head of institutional relations at Solaris.

The company made a bold move in 2011 by starting electric bus production when few European manufacturers were exploring this technology. Figaszewski explained that larger Western companies had more to lose if electric vehicles proved unsuccessful. “It became an opportunity to achieve technological leadership ahead of the market,” he said. Today, Solaris holds around 15% of Europe’s electric bus market.

Challenges remain, however. Poland faces an aging population with a low birth rate, meaning fewer workers will support retirees in coming decades. Average wages still lag behind the EU average, and while small and medium enterprises thrive, few have developed into global brands.

Poznan Mayor Jacek Jaśkowiak sees domestic innovation as the third wave in Poland’s post-socialist development. The first wave saw foreign companies opening factories in Poland during the early 1990s to leverage the skilled workforce. Around 2000, Western firms established more advanced operations in finance, IT, and engineering.

“Now it’s the time to start such sophisticated activities here,” Jaśkowiak says, emphasizing that investing in universities is among his top priorities.

Katarzyna Szarzec, an economist at the Poznan University of Economics and Business, believes more progress is needed. “There is still much to do when it comes to innovation and technological progress,” she said. “But we keep climbing up that ladder of added value. We’re no longer just a supplier of spare parts.”

Her students point to remaining challenges: reducing urban-rural inequalities, making housing more affordable, and supporting young families. They also emphasize the importance of acknowledging immigrants’ contribution to economic growth, including the millions of Ukrainians who fled to Poland following Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Despite these challenges, young Poles remain optimistic. “Poland has such a dynamic economy, with so many opportunities for development, that of course I am staying,” said 27-year-old graduate student Kazimierz Falak. “Poland is promising.”