Poland is one of the most staunchly pro-American countries in the European Union, though attitudes are changing: a study published three months into Donald Trump's second presidency found that only 31% of Poles were happy with the state of their country's relations with America, a drop of 49 percentage points since 2023. The share of Poles with a positive view of America is at a record low.
Power rests primarily with the prime minister and parliament. The president wields real influence by signing laws into force or vetoing them, appointing judges and ambassadors, and helping to shape foreign policy. Presidents can rarely impose their own agenda, but they can frustrate the government's.
Prime minister Donald Tusk leads a ruling coalition under Civic Coalition (KO), which came to power in 2023. The coalition includes conservatives, liberals, leftists and greens, and remains divided on abortion, same-sex unions, housing and state funding for the Catholic church. Only 39% of Poles viewed the government favourably as of mid-2025. Many of Tusk's campaign promises remain unkept. The stand-off between Tusk and Nawrocki has paralysed Polish politics; fearing vetoes and squabbles with coalition partners, Tusk has shelved plans to relax the draconian abortion ban imposed under PiS, and attempts to clean up the judiciary, including the Constitutional Tribunal that PiS packed with loyalists, have stalled. GDP grew by 3.6% in 2025 and unemployment remained the second-lowest in the EU at 3.2%.
PiS is a nationalist party that packed the courts with judges through a flawed and politicised procedure and turned public media into a propaganda machine. It also championed the country's abortion ban, imposed in 2020 by the constitutional court.
Konfederacja is a hard-right party that unites MAGA types, libertarians and Eurosceptics.
In the first round on May 18th 2025, Rafał Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor backed by KO, won 31.4% of the vote. Karol Nawrocki, the PiS-backed candidate—who had been hosted at the White House by Trump before the vote—took 29.5%. Slawomir Mentzen of Konfederacja won 14.8%, and Grzegorz Braun, an open antisemite, a troubling 6.3%. The two big-party candidates' combined first-round share was lower than in any presidential election since the 1990s.
Days before the run-off, America's homeland-security secretary Kristi Noem addressed a rally in Jasionka, near the Ukrainian border, urging Poles to elect Nawrocki and implying that the American military garrison in Poland was conditional on choosing a leader willing to work with Trump.
In the June 1st run-off Nawrocki won with 50.9% to Trzaskowski's 49.1%, endorsed by Viktor Orbán and Trump's administration. His victory may cripple the government's rule-of-law reforms: Nawrocki can veto legislation, and the coalition lacks the three-fifths majority to override. The WIG stockmarket index fell 2% after the result. In an exit poll, 47% of voters had a poor opinion of the government; only 30% a favourable one. Tusk called a confidence vote for June 11th.
Tusk's coalition includes the progressive New Left, the centrist Poland 2050 and the conservative agrarian Polish People's Party (PSL); liberals want to relax PiS's draconian anti-abortion laws, but face opposition mostly from PSL.
Poland is a country of 37m people that has achieved a stunning economic transformation since the fall of the Soviet Union, moving from upper-middle to high-income status (by World Bank standards) in just 15 years. Since 1995 real GDP per person has risen 3.1 times, compared with 1.5 times for the EU as a whole. Unemployment is just about non-existent. Poland has grown faster than America since the war in Ukraine began, and is forecast to continue growing at an annual clip of 3%. Since joining the EU in 2004 Poland has never experienced a recession, apart from briefly during covid-19, and has averaged annual growth of almost 4%. The IMF reckons that in 2025 Poland's GDP per person will exceed Japan's, adjusted for purchasing power. In 2005 Poland's income on this measure was 50% of the EU average; in 2025 the IMF thinks it will rise to 85%.
Poland boasts the EU's tallest building. A decade-old universal child-benefit programme pays 800 zlotys ($212) per month per child. The government's own forecasts see the budget deficit at 6.9% of GDP in 2025 and still 6.1% by 2028. Ministers are prioritising defence and support for consumption. Public debt could reach 70% of GDP by 2028, up from 51% before Russia's war in Ukraine began.
The Warsaw Stock Exchange's WIG index rose by over 40% in 2025 (in dollar terms) and nearly tripled from a trough in 2022, making Poland Europe's best-performing stockmarket. Share prices are only ten times firms' expected earnings, compared with 15 for Europe and 22 for America. Financial firms make up 40% of the WIG's $520bn market capitalisation. Erste Group Bank, an Austrian lender, is acquiring Santander Bank Polska, Poland's third-largest bank.
Donald Tusk's comparatively hands-off administration has made Poland far more investible than the preceding Law and Justice government, which installed a crony to run Poland's central bank (which then slashed interest rates during the 2023 election campaign despite inflation at 10%) and used the state energy firm Orlen to cut fuel prices ahead of the vote. Tusk's government has so far unlocked €21bn ($23bn) in post-covid EU aid that had been withheld owing to PiS's meddling with the courts.
In 2025 Poland spent 4.5-4.7% of GDP on defence, the highest in NATO, up from 2.2% in 2022, with plans to raise spending to over 5% the following year. It has mainly bought American kit: F-35s, tanks, attack helicopters, HIMARS rocket launchers and air-defence systems. Poland fields the largest army in Europe after Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, and the third-largest in NATO. Its growing military weight has earned it a place alongside Britain, France and Germany in a group sometimes dubbed the "four musketeers" of European security. Much of the spending has so far gone on imports to replace hardware sent to Ukraine after Russia's invasion. In March 2025 Poland said it would buy another 180 K2 tanks from Hyundai Rotem for $6bn, doubling its fleet of the vehicles. In November 2025 Poland ordered three Saab-built a26 submarines for an estimated $2.8bn—a pressing upgrade from its single creaky Soviet-era submarine. The a26, at 66 metres, is compact but stealthy, with a bow portal for deploying underwater drones, sensors and divers onto the seabed; delivery is expected in the 2030s. A bill passed by parliament in November 2025 allows the navy to use force to protect critical infrastructure, even outside Poland's territorial waters. Poland is also acquiring manufacturing and maintenance capacity; the government says it will spend 50% of its technological-modernisation funds on domestically made equipment.
Defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wants half the orders for combat equipment to be produced in Poland. The state-owned Polish Armaments Group (PGZ), a conglomerate of 50 firms, has crowded out most private defence companies but is unfit to supply even essentials. In 2025 the government ordered 96 howitzers from a PGZ company and signed a deal for 111 Borsuks, the first military vehicles to be fully developed in Poland, manufactured in the south-eastern city of Stalowa Wola.
Poland has long been viewed as a central European country, but its centre of gravity is shifting north towards the Baltic Sea. The country's south was home to most of its coal mines and heavy industry. Poland plans to phase out coal by 2049 to align with EU clean-energy targets. In June 2025, renewables generated more power than coal for the first time. Wind power accounts for 14.7% of the energy mix, up from 0.3% two decades ago.
Poland has weaned itself entirely off Russian oil and gas but relies on the Baltic's pipelines and ports for nearly half of its energy imports. Its LNG terminal at Świnoujście handles 8.3bn cubic metres (bcm) per year; a second terminal in Gdańsk, capable of 6.1bcm, is due to open in 2028. A pipeline from Norway through Denmark (Baltic Pipe), launched in 2022, provides up to 10bcm of gas. Poland's first nuclear plant, expected to open by 2036, will be sited less than 2km inshore on the Baltic coast, whose cool waters suit reactor cores. By 2040 Poland may invest well over $100bn in offshore wind farms and new LNG terminals. Offshore wind farms, including Baltic Power near Łeba (turbines over 260 metres tall, powering 1.5m homes), are expected to reach 18 gigawatts by 2040—the biggest energy-investment programme in Poland's modern history, costing more than $140bn over 15 years.
Port shipments have nearly doubled in a decade. Gdańsk is now the EU's fifth-busiest commercial port. Gdynia's port has become a key NATO hub for military equipment destined for Ukraine and American bases. Rail Baltica, a $28bn project, will connect Poland with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Relations with Hungary and Slovakia, whose leaders have a soft spot for Russia, are badly frayed. The Visegrád Group, the main vehicle for co-operation between Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, is fast becoming irrelevant. Poland has instead begun to close ranks on maritime security, energy and Russia with the Baltic and Nordic countries, including NATO newcomers Finland and Sweden.
A study found that refugees generate 2.7% of Poland's GDP.
On the night of September 9th–10th 2025, 19 Russian drones breached Poland's airspace—the most serious incursion into NATO territory since the alliance's founding in 1949. Polish fighter jets and Dutch F-35s deployed to Poland shot down some of them; others crashed. One fell 300km deep into Polish territory. The government invoked NATO's Article 4, triggering consultation with allies. Donald Tusk said Poland was at its "closest to open conflict since the second world war." Karol Nawrocki called it "an unprecedented moment in the history of NATO and Poland."
Poland closed its border with Belarus on September 9th ahead of Russia's Zapad military exercises starting September 12th. Many of the drones entered Poland directly from Belarus.
Poland's state grid operator, PSE, is hardening its infrastructure against Russian attack. Its national control room near Warsaw is already underground; PSE plans to construct additional underground bunkers at secret locations housing what its security chief, Daniel Wagner, describes as "really big" control rooms. PSE is forming a helicopter-borne combat unit trained in electrical engineering for fighting in and near power plants and substations. If war breaks out, 60% of PSE staff will automatically become military personnel unable to quit for safer jobs. Poland joined the Baltic states in requesting that the EU fund half of a €382m ($442m) plan to protect the region's grids.
Rzeszow airport, near the Ukrainian border, is the main hub for the transfer of Western military aid to Ukraine. Foreign minister Radek Sikorski has warned Russia: "If another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission, deliberately or by mistake, and gets shot down…please don't come here to whine about it. You have been warned."
Polish leaders have long castigated Germany over the Nord Stream pipelines, which made Europe more dependent on Russian gas. When Friedrich Merz became Germany's chancellor in May 2025 there were high hopes for a new partnership, but "it was a sort of reset that never took place," according to Kai-Olaf Lang of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Germany soon instituted immigration controls, including on its Polish border; Poland responded with checks of its own.
In October 2025 a Warsaw court refused to extradite Volodymyr Zhuravlev, a Ukrainian diving instructor accused by German prosecutors of being part of a seven-person team that blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022. Polish prosecutors declined to appeal. Donald Tusk wrote on X: "The problem with North Stream 2 is not that it was blown up. The problem is that it was built."
Karol Nawrocki has resurrected demands for reparations for the second world war, an issue Germany insists was settled decades ago.
Belarus, a client state of Russia to Poland's east, has been shipping migrants from the Middle East and Asia into Poland, many of whom move on to Germany. Poland argues that efforts should be focused on the EU's external border rather than on checks at internal Schengen crossings. Poland reportedly refused to accept two Afghans turned back by Germany under new border rules introduced in May 2025.
It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.