🇵🇱 Poland

Poland's demographic picture is a sophisticated three-layer cope: (1) historically lost 1.5–2M working-age Poles to UK, Germany, Ireland — the post-2004 generation that powered Western economies now powering Polish real estate markets as landlords; (2) since 2022 absorbed ~1M+ Ukrainian refugees who fill labour gaps but are temporary by definition; (3) youth unemployment has nearly DOUBLED in twelve periods (8.4% → 13.2%) — the canary screaming that even with 2 million imported workers, the Polish youth labour market is structurally broken. Median age 42.4 and rising, TFR ~1.3, and the boomer retirement wave hits Poland harder than Western states because the post-communist demographic transition was compressed. When the Ukrainians go home, the real Polish unemployment rate surfaces.

Tusk's government inherited a PiS AI strategy that was mostly PowerPoint and procurement fraud potential. Real policy is delegated to EU Recovery Facility disbursements, which Poland is still struggling to unlock due to rule-of-law conditionality. No serious industrial AI strategy, no large-scale retraining infrastructure, and the National AI Policy is largely a repackaging of EU AI Act compliance — which is itself a cage. Private sector pivots are happening but the public sector response is bureaucratic cope.