Jacek Bartosiak & Albert Świdziński talk about Poland’s journey from peripheral position and its prospects (Video)

Hi everyone, my name is Albert Świdziński. Welcome to another Strategy and Future podcast. We switched roles today. Usually it's Jacek who's the founder of Strategy and Future. It is usually him who starts our conversations. But we decided to swap roles today because Jacek and another colleague of ours Marek Stefan are in process of writing a new book. I I think it's the first call-up between them in the book form, which concerns Poland s role, Poland s path, Poland s travel from periphery to core. Poland historically, while obviously we like to repeat to ourselves an integral part of Europe, has been, especially in terms of

The way its legal system has developed, the banking system, the ability to mobilize capital, the industrial production has usually been considered to be not necessarily the very core region of Europe. And Jacek and Marek's book both describes, I suppose, this path and also how, proposes a way to change it, which is especially difficult since At least this is my feeling. The core we used to aspire to, which is Western Europe, more broadly speaking the West, Poland is not really the core of the global economic system of the innovation ecosystems anymore.

That has moved either across the Atlantic or to East Asia. So, Jacek, if you could give us a brief rundown of your book, the main premises, where do we want to find ourselves in 10, 20, 50 years time? The subject that we are trying to debate in the book with Marek Stefan has been a central point of concern for Polish strategists for the last couple of hundred of years. Especially the English speaker, for those in the world who speak English, who are educated in the Anglo-Saxon Poland and countries in this part of the world are a flyover zone between Germany and Russia.

So Poland always has two strategic dilemmas. One is how to keep Russia out of the European system of balancing game. NATO and the United States did it for us for the last 35 years. Before that, the Soviet Union was occupying us and we had also the interwar period after we had defeated the Soviet troops. But before that, only before Peter the Great, we could exist because Russia was out of the system. So now the Polish objective is to keep Russia out of the European system, which will be a very tough Jacek Bartosiak, Jacek Bartosiak Albert Świdziński

Jacek Bartosiak Poland has been for the last 400 years a peripheral country in terms of economic development. So we were poorer, less developed, less advanced and we had to rely heavily on other in macroeconomic system. On imperial Russia to prosper, on Germany like in the last 35 years to prosper as a subcontracting economy. Also, you know, thanks to the EU funds.

And there is a revolution maturing in Poland because the new private sector that had to go through the hardship of the privatizations of the foreign capital, penetrations of the 90s and the unemployment and then grew up and this is the sector that delivers the growth of which Poland is famous in Europe will want to have a political right, political power very soon. And also will demand reforms. And it will demand a different place for Poland in the European macroeconomic system. Not anymore the peripheral country that provides raw subcontracting services or raw materials or agricultural products.

If Poland doesn't play ball, it has the potential to destabilize the region, destabilize the cooperation between Russia and the Western Europeans. It could be a thorn. And at the same time, in and of itself, it is too small to be an independent element defining the rules. Jacek Bartosiak Albert Świdziński Jacek Bartosiak, Jacek Bartosiak Albert Świdziński

We cannot really, even if we are comfortable and unambitious, And we would be happy to stay in that position. It's unlikely to be a possibility simply because the core is withering. So what do we do with that? So on those three levels, where do you, because we have to find a clearly that things cannot go on as they had, even if we wish them to. So where do we go from here? We are trying to put a genuine light on Poland s ambitious growth and people are even jealous in Europe of how fast we grow. But it must be admitted that this growth was based on the model of development that is expiring.

And Poland will need to find a new engine. For the new engine to be found, you need to have a new political representatives, new representation, new elites. And the political power of the middle class That was created in hardship of the 90s and 2000s has to be manifested in how the elections work and how the country is being reformed and their reforms will have to be thorough. And then Poland will be strong enough to address the two issues that are most acute. Keeping Russia at bay, at best, you know, and most preferably with our friends in the region. Because as we talked before, the future of the United States is unknown and is

And depending on how war in Ukraine ends, also this puts us in also another perspective, which is unknown in the West. Let me remind all of our listeners of what the Western European countries were saying to Ukrainians, you know, to kind of give up quickly or they were not treating Ukraine seriously. Once Ukraine defeated the Russians at the gates of Kiev and then, and then, another two offensives, President Macron had to come over to Slovakia and talk to the leaders in the region to understand that the perspectives of the region towards Russia is different from those of the Western Europe and he had to adjust.

He had to adjust. So things are changing. We will see if they will change for good and for the long time. It will very much hint upon the outcome of the war between Russia and Ukraine and the reforms, the major reforms that will need to be undertaken in Poland in order to move Poland past the middle income trap. And the political leader that will emerge, who will be Who will be capable of grasping the breadth of this challenge, the importance of this challenge and the necessity to carry it through and implement the change will change Poland and will change the region.

So that's the case and I think that the situation is maturing in terms of the structure of politics and the wishes of the society. Albert? This is a question we asked ourselves in our private conversations, but access to capital has also been something that has been a severe problem here in Poland, right? And also access to innovation. At this point in time we will have to still, even though we're looking to remove ourselves from the periphery, We ourselves clearly are not forming a core region in and of itself.

So it is a threat if the continental consolidation is being undertaken and implemented under the leadership and the decisive vote of Russia. And it's been a disaster for Poland during the Second World War and in the 19th century and when that was the case. If it is China that is doing it, and in the terms of trade and political consequences of those, negotiate between China and the European Peninsula, This is the new world that we've never been in.

Sowieci nie mają tej drogi. Wczorajszym Sowieckim. Wczorajszym Sowieckim. And then the foreign powers were trying to change it. So we had this, how to say to the English, it was not enslavement, but the peasants were subordinate to land, to serve on mansions. So there was a lot of feudalism. It was a very difficult path of reforms to move away from feudalism towards the modernity and still there are some remains of that. Spain had the same problems. It was resolved in a different way by the Civil War and then the death of Franco and reforms and so forth.

So we have a very equal society. Equal society but divided into the private sector and public sector. And the public sector there are still solid remains of the feudalism so meaning that the job assessment is not based on the outcome and results but on the relations and convictions. And this has to be also addressed by this new change that is looming in Poland. In order to make a big leap forward, using a famous phrase, not so, how to say that, noble person, Mao Zedong, but a big leap forward to find a new engine.