Poland… A country that rises from the ashes of history !

Poland… A country that rises from the ashes of history !

Mohamed Musallam, 22/10/2025, H.M.

Poland is the birthplace of minds who have contributed to changing the world throughout history, including the astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus and the physicist Marie Skodowska Curie. A country born from the ashes of history to build glory at the beginning of the third millennium. Its people are peaceful, meek, opportunistic, hard-working.

Warsaw is the capital of Poland, counting about three million people, divided into two sections, separated by the Vistula River. The eastern side still preserves its historical monuments, which have benefited a lot from Russian culture and architectural heritage due to well-known historical considerations, while the western part of the river has been imbued with Western appearances and culture, and the visitor can see giant buildings competing with each other, overlooking the sky. In short, the contradictions of Warsaw clearly sum up the disparity between East and West.

A visitor to Warsaw, or “Varshavá” as the Poles call it, can be surprised by the vastness of its clean streets, the tight regulation of traffic despite the crowds, and the traveler can notice a French presence in the heart of the city through the “Accor” chain of hotels, which count many signs, such as “Marquer”, “Novotel” and others.

This observation was also recorded by the light-shadowed translator, Marczyn Grodsky, who spoke to Al-Shorouk about the French precedence in investing in the hotel sector in Poland, after the transformation that this country witnessed at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties of the last century. France, although it is somewhat distant from Poland, has special ties with it that extend back centuries, exemplified by the presence of a Polish community in France, which was preceded by the historical alliance with Napoleon I.Poland
today is far from the heir of its former ally, Russia, despite its geographical proximity to it, but it has become closer to its current biggest ally, the United States of America, despite the geography factor, but this does not mean that the country of the year has the first word in Warsaw, because the European giant, Germany, has also been able since the transformations of the 1990s to establish its foothold in this country, with huge investments, and thus consolidate its political influence, which is not mistaken by any observer, certainly from politicians Poland is an important element of its national security in Eastern Europe, where they share a 467-kilometre land border.

German influence through investment is also strongly present in southwestern Poland, precisely in the Silesian region, of which Katowice is the capital. The latter was annexed by Prussian Germany during unification in 1871, but was recaptured by Poland after World War II, in which Nazi Germany was defeated.

Heading south to Silesia, we have seen extraordinary activity in this city, large workshops to expand the railway line, and a modern urban renaissance of international standards sweeping the city of Katowice. We heard from the media relations officer of the Katowica Special Economic Zone, Lukasz Borkowski, that this province, after its economy was based on coal mining and heavy industry, is now shifting strongly towards an economy based on innovation, microtechnology and artificial intelligence, and that the Chinese, Americans, Germans and Japan have pumped Big money in this promising province in terms of unconventional economic activity.

According to the media official of the economic zone, at least 700,000 enterprises have been established during the last 30 years, which constitute the age of the economic zone in the province of Silesia, during which 100,000 jobs have been created and about 1,000 investment projects worth about 10 billion euros. Algeria’s ambassador to Warsaw, Mohamed Salaheddine Belaid, visited the region, which the speaker considered the beginning of cooperation between the two countries.

The beginning of the Great Transformation

Until the end of the 1980s, Poland, despite being officially independent, was only one of the backward eastern bloc countries in the orbit of the former Soviet Union, and with the fall of the pro-Moscow regime, following the movement led by the chief shipyard trade unionist in the port of Gdansk, Lech Walesa, the great transformation of Poland’s modern history, full of achievements, began.

As the old saying goes, “the wheel of politics drags the economy”, the political transformations in this country, for which history and geography have been destined to live sandwiched between two historically powerful expansionist neighboring powers, Russia and Germany, have succeeded in pulling the Polish economy out of the clutches of backwardness from the communist era, driven by the wise policy of the country’s new leaders, and supported by the strong investments that have poured into it from its neighbors in Western Europe, led by the German giant.

Poland’s acceptance of Warsaw’s accession to the European Union forum in 2004 marks the country’s entry into a new era of prosperity, due to the enormous investment opportunities and technology transformation that this economic space offers, without ignoring the potential that Poland has.

Innovation-based economy

Poland’s economy is now the sixth largest in the European Union and the largest among its Central European counterparts. Since 2019, Poland’s economy has been growing steadily over the past 28 years, setting a record in the European Union, surpassed only by the Irish economy at the European level and the Australian economy at the global level.

The World Bank ranks Poland as a high-income economy and ranks 21st in the world in terms of GDP, which has qualified it to be a notable member of the G20 of the world’s largest economies. Poland’s economy is also highly diversified and is today considered one of the leading economies that rely heavily on innovation, thanks to government policies based on investment in this highly sensitive sector.

Thanks to this government direction, Poland ranked 41st in the Global Innovation Index in 2023, and advanced one place in the 2024 index to 40th place, which made some Polish academics liken their country to “Japan of Europe” in the field of innovation, as Andrzej Kubisiak, deputy director of the (Polish) Institute of Economic Sciences, said in an interview with “Al-Shorouk” in the Polish capital, Warsaw.

New Movement Conference.

During Al-Shorouk’s presence in Poland, the southern city of Katowice hosted the sixth edition of the “New Mobility Conference”, one of the 15 major economic activities held during the year. The conference is a diverse international exhibition dominated by the participation of manufacturers of cars, electric trucks and batteries, in which innovative and creative projects are strongly present.

The European presence was remarkable in its sixth edition, with well-known brands such as Germany’s Volkswagen, Sweden’s Volvo and, to a lesser extent, France’s Renault, and the participation of Japan, Korean, and Chinese brands was also strongly present. The occasion usually witnesses the signing of many fruitful agreements, such as what happened with Taiwan, in addition to an existing agreement with South Korea for the manufacture of batteries, according to an official source at the conference.

The New Mobility Conference is preparing the ground for the establishment of start-ups, with Poland’s “stability in the legal regulations and the right place, and this constitutes an appropriate framework that helps attract investments towards Poland, and without the transformations that Poland has witnessed, this would not have happened,” the official said.

Poland.. an open workshop on the air !

On the train from Warsaw to the capital of the south, Katowice, the electrified and modern railway line, which stretches across plains across the plains, is undergoing new expansion. The project is part of an economic vision to connect cities to the railway artery, funded by the central government in the amount of €2 billion and supported by investment funds.

The challenges of the Polish economic model require the consolidation of innovative thinking, and as a result of this, the establishment of the Local Research Development Center in the Kawice region was signed, with the support of the central government. Thanks to this strategy, Katowice became the capital of precision and smart industries. Lukasz Borkowski praises the support of Europeans for his country in its transformation, and recalls it: “The investment was worth gold. We were welcoming German and French investment, and we succeeded in doing so, but in the short term, because the cost of labor has now gone up,” says the same official.

Economically, the war in Ukraine near its eastern border has posed new challenges to the Polish economy. On the positive side, thousands of Ukrainians who fled the hell of war and settled in the neighboring country have contributed to Poland’s economic growth by providing labor, raising its performance and thus creating wealth and jobs.

Defense obsession puts pressure on the public budget

Since the outbreak of the war next to Poland, Poland has been faced with the imperative of developing its defense capabilities in anticipation of the explosive situation in the Eastern European region. Because of this self-imposed fact, the Polish government has allocated at least five percent of its budget to defense, in the context of its bet on providing the weapons it needs to defend the country’s security.Poland
‘s move was not unilateral in EU countries, but was inspired by Brussels to address security challenges coming from the east, which also explains why Germany, which until recently was demilitarized, has allocated at least 900 billion euros to develop its military arsenal.

Previously, the defense industry was not welcome, says Lukasz Borkovsky, but today it has become a priority because of the geopolitical situation in the region, a reference to the Russia-Ukraine war. Poles are betting on American expertise in this area, but they are very confident that local businessmen will invest in innovation in this sensitive sector and shy away from traditional ready-made patterns.

“The government is in the process of spending more money on weapons,” Borkowski says

advanced technologies in the defense industry and domestic production, so we opened the region to defense industries and missile systems,” but this did not prevent the acquisition of advanced aircraft from the United States of America and everything that could not be produced locally.

Polish software giant interested in entering Algerian market

During Shorouk’s stay in Warsaw, she was greeted by a team from ASSECO, a Polish IT conglomerate that is the largest software manufacturer in Eastern Europe and the sixth largest company in the European market. The group offers software solutions for banks, insurance companies, toll, healthcare, utilities, and waste disposal, and has a customer base of more than 60,000 customers in Europe.

The group, based on its officials, seems to be very interested in the Algerian market, despite the fact that it has not been able to get deals, as it has participated in five offers so far, which has hurt the psyche of its officials, who confirmed that their group provides software services to international banks, such as the German giant, Deutsche Bank, and Volkswagen Bank. However, the reason may seem obvious, and it has to do with the sensitivity of the tenders in which the group participated, which is represented in providing software solutions for some offers, which is governed by more distant considerations. Much more than just efficiency and effectiveness to other things.

The leading Polish giant in the field of software and smart solutions “ACECO”, despite the lack of success in previous offers, still seems determined to enter the Algerian market.

Cooperation without ambitions !

During the meetings that brought Al-Shorouk together with specialists in Poland, there was surprise every time that economic cooperation with Algeria was limited, despite known historical considerations, as the two countries were among the first countries to witness political and economic transformations in the last decade of the twentieth century. Sources from the Polish authorities (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) confirmed the existence of offers from the Warsaw government, and plans are being made to intensify relations in the economic field.

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