It was easy to see a contrast. Where Czech president Petr Pavel publicly embraced a Ukrainian girl humiliated by her classmates, just a month later his Polish counterpart Karol Nawrocki removed benefits from the children of unemployed Ukrainian single mothers. One of Poland’s leading liberal-oriented publicists, Sławomir Sierakowski, a critic of right-wing president Nawrocki, was sure to highlight the opposition in the two leaders’ treatment of refugees. One president signals compassion, the other enacts exclusion.
But in Poland, this exclusion has become a central language of power. Not only far-right figures but also liberal forces compete to show how firmly they can “protect the Polish taxpayer” from supposed foreign freeloaders.
Still, Nawrocki’s veto of a new Ukraine aid law passed by parliament, which would have extended legal residency for refugees until 2026, makes one thing clear already. By blocking the extension of the provisions first introduced in 2022, he has forced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians — and the firms that employ them — into legal uncertainty.
The logic of the veto is revealing. Economically, it makes little sense. Ukrainians are not a burden but a crucial component of the Polish workforce: 701,800 were legally employed by early 2025, accounting for two-thirds of all foreign workers, with labor-force participation reaching 78 percent, far above the Polish average. Their contribution to GDP in 2024 stood at 2.7 percent of the total. Yet Nawrocki insisted that only those “paying contributions” should be entitled to family benefits or health care. Behind the technocratic rhetoric of fiscal discipline, the message is clear: migrants can work, but they cannot belong.
What is at stake, here, is the…
Auteur: Krzysztof Katkowski
