Country Sheet : Poland

Information file

Last Update on 29th October 2024

POLAND

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In English - version of 29th October 2024

Geography

Area : 312,679 km²

Borders : 3,071 km (Belarus 418 km, Czech Republic 796 km, Germany 467 km, Lithuania 104 km, Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast) 210 km, Slovakia 541 km, Ukraine 535 km) Coastline: 440 km (Baltic Sea)

Coastline : 440 km (Baltic Sea)

Capital : Warsaw

Official language : Polish

Source : The CIA World Factbook

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Population

Population : 36,620,970 inhabitants (2023)

Crude natural change rate : -3.7‰ (2023)

Population repartition: 15.4% under 15 years old, 19.9% over 65 years old (est. 2023)

Crude net migration rate: 0,1 ‰ (2023)

First time asylum applicants: 9,475 (2023)

Life expectancy: men 75.3 years, women 82.9 years (2023 est.)

Religions: Catholic 85%, Orthodox 1.3%, Protestant 0.4%, other 0.3%, unspecified 12.9% (2020 est.)

Ethnic groups: Polish 96.9%, German 0.2%, Silesians 1.1%, Ukrainian 0.1%, other and unspecified 1.7% (2011 est.)

Source : Eurostat, The World Factbook

Economy

Currency: Zloty (PLN) (exchange rate October 2024: 1€ = 4.35 PLN)

GDP: € 748,923.4 million (2023)

GDP per capita (PPS): € 14,880 (2023)

GDP growth : 0.1% (2023)

Inflation: 4.2% (September 2024)

Public debt: 52.3% of GDP (Q2, 2024)

Unemployment: 2.9% (August 2024)

Stock of foreign direct investment from the entire world: 38.6% of GDP (2022)

Performance sectors: furniture, automobile industry, shipbuilding, food industry, steel industry

Budget balance: -5.8% of GDP (2023)

Source : Eurostat, Trading Economics

Political system

Republic, parliamentary democracy (Constitution of 17th October 1997)

Head of State: Andrzej Duda (Law and Justice, PiS), elected on 24th May 2015 by direct universal suffrage (five-year term renewable once) and reelected on 12th July 2020

Prime Minister: Donald Tusk (KO) was elected President of the Council of Ministers by the Sejm on 11th December 2023 and has been in office since 13th December 2023. He leads a coalition government between the Civic Coalition, Third Way and New Left.

Bicameral parliamentary system: The Diet (Sejm) comprises of 460 members who are elected for a four-year term by proportional representation. A threshold of 5% of votes is necessary for a political party (8% for a coalition) to be represented in the Diet; some seats are reserved for representatives of ethnic minorities. The 100 members of the Senate are elected for four years by majority vote; representatives and senators are elected at the same time.