Polish President Karol Nawrocki has warned that Poland must not follow what he called the failed Western European model of using immigration to address demographic decline, arguing that the approach has created social problems without solving falling birth rates.
Speaking at the Poland Future Summit in Warsaw on Monday, the conservative president said Poland should respond to its demographic crisis by strengthening families and encouraging higher birth rates rather than relying on migration.
“Migration has not solved the problem; it has only brought ghettoisation, assimilation problems, social unrest, and everything else Western Europe is grappling with today,” Nawrocki said.
“This is not, and will not be, the Polish path. We will not replace the demographic crisis by succumbing to migration pressure.”
His remarks come as Poland faces one of the most severe demographic challenges in Europe. Last year, births fell to a post-war low of 238,000 while deaths reached 406,000, marking the thirteenth consecutive year in which more Poles died than were born.
The country’s fertility rate also fell to a record low of 1.068 children per woman in 2025, barely half the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population.
“It will be impossible to build a strong, secure state, and a state that develops, without overcoming the demographic crisis,” Nawrocki warned.
The president argued that the answer lies not in immigration but in rebuilding a family-oriented culture.
“The solution lies in a clear focus on the Polish family,” he said. “We must promote the idea that family is the most important thing; this is our Polish response to the demographic crisis.”
Nawrocki said politicians, employers, and society as a whole all have a role to play. He pointed to a proposal he made last year to reduce income tax for parents with two or more children and criticised Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing coalition for failing to advance it.
He also called on businesses to make family life easier through more flexible working arrangements and by supporting women returning to work after childbirth.
Successive Polish governments have introduced measures aimed at raising birth rates. The flagship policy of the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government was a child-benefit programme that provided monthly payments for each child. While births initially rose after its introduction in 2016, the longer-term decline soon resumed.
The current government has introduced new support payments for working parents and restored state funding for IVF treatment, which had previously been cut under PiS.
The debate comes as Poland continues to experience historically high levels of immigration despite strong anti-immigration rhetoric across much of the political spectrum. There are now around two million legal foreign residents in Poland, including 1.14 million foreign workers. In 2023, Poland’s state Social Insurance Institution estimated that the country would need a further two million immigrant workers over the next decade to maintain its current ratio of workers to retirees, though it acknowledged that such a target would be difficult to achieve.
