A permanent EU recovery fund can help Poland change by Elisabetta Cornago and John Springford
Poland’s relationship with the EU is already in a bad state, with continuing disputes about the rule of law, the recovery fund, and the Polish government’s opposition to LGBTIQ rights. The EU’s climate ambitions will only add to this tension, given Poland’s largely coal-fired economy. Warsaw will have to enact unpopular reforms that will hurt industrial communities to end coal production, as agreed between the government and the coal mining industry in order to comply with EU climate goals. Poland’s government will be tempted to blame the EU for the tough choices ahead, but the EU’s recovery fund could be used to defuse the conflict, if it is made permanent and reformed.
now. In 1980, the UK was producing 130 million tons of coal a year: by 2010, that had fallen to 18 million. Poland will go through an almost identical change: in 2019, Poland produced 122 million tons of coal and lignite, and the government and coal mining industry agreed last year that production should end in 2049, thirty years later.
The authoritarian and nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), which now leads a coalition government, rose to power in superficially benign economic conditions, with Poland’s GDP per capita growing strongly at 4 per cent a year between 2004, when the country joined the EU, and 2019. That performance masked growing income inequality and the continued loss of younger, skilled people from Poland’s regions to Warsaw and to countries in Western Europe. Poland’s coal-fired economy is about to go through wrenching change, especially the mining region of Silesia, which might encourage Law and Justice and its coalition partner United Poland to further whip up antipathy towards the EU.
Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the 1985 miners’ strike and the rapid deindustrialisation that followed remains a feature of Britain’s economic and political geography. Former industrial regions in Wales, Scotland and northern England remain significantly poorer than southern England. Poland’s Law and Justice government is keener to avoid alienating voters in industrial regions than Thatcher was. The party has close ties to the coal business, and Poland’s 83,000 miners and their families represent an important voting bloc. Law and Justice is seeking to protect employment in industrial regions – a legitimate goal, given the permanent scars left by deindustrialisation in other countries. It is only reluctantly ceding to EU pressure to reduce the environmental impacts of heavy industry.
Consider the similarities between the UK in the 1980s – the first big European coal producer that let its industry shrink rapidly – and Poland
In September, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, partly blamed the EU for rising gas and electricity prices, saying they were “tied to