“Do as Poland does!”
2025-01-16
New Republic Insight #4
“Learn from Denmark”, ”Do like Norway!” or “Look at Finland!” are recurrent calls in Swedish debates. Our tendency to compare ourselves with our Nordic neighbors is almost reflexive: Finland is praised for its housing market, Denmark for its investments in pharmaceuticals, while Norway is admired for its fishing industry. But a new trend is emerging. From nowhere - or rather from the south-east - Poland, the new EU president, is emerging as a role model in the Swedish debate.
Poland is impressing with its economic recovery and success. Its GDP per capita has increased by 150% in 30 years - a feat that no other country in Europe can match in the same period. Poland is expected to overtake the UK in GDP per capita by 2030, provided that the countries' average economic growth continues at the same rate as in the past decade. In 2009, the country moved from upper middle-income to high-income status by the World Bank. In addition, Poland has invested heavily in defense, welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees, and become a key player in the EU and a strategic partner of the United States. Sweden's relationship with Poland has also deepened. Trade between the two countries is booming and in 2024 a strategic partnership in security, innovation and competitiveness was renewed.
As a result, Poland is increasingly highlighted in the Swedish media as a pioneering country and comparisons with Poland, rather than with our Nordic neighbors, are made to a greater extent.
We saw a foretaste of this in the fall of 2024, when the Swedish government rejected 13 applications for offshore wind power in the Baltic Sea. Several critics pointed specifically to Poland - a NATO country that has managed to combine massive defense investments with an expansion of offshore wind power. Why can't Sweden follow Poland's lead?
With Poland's new presidency of the EU, it is not unlikely that in 2025, regardless of the topic, we will increasingly hear a new call in the Swedish debate - Do like Poland!
Stina Kinnerbäck
Researcher, New Republic