Poland move back to Poland

For the first time in more than 30 years, more Poles from Germany are moving back to their home country than vice versa. It attracts with economic growth, leaner administration and lower taxes.

In the bathroom, Zbyszek Perzyna demonstrates on a small scale, which in his view everything goes wrong in Germany. “We have not had cold water in the shower for eleven or twelve years.” The result: if he or his wife Kamila want to take Gierko, threaten scales.

Of course, the shower is not the reason why the couple now wants to strange with Germany and move back to Poland. But for the two, the bathroom tap is a small symbol of things that do not work in this country and are not better.

Many little things

“Many little things together – everyone: a big problem,” says Perzyna. There is also water damage on the kitchen ceiling, a non -functioning intercom and various other problems, which the property management simply does not care about, the two say. And they couldn’t take a shower to this day if they hadn’t helped themselves.

“But I’m from Poland,” he says jokingly, thinking that he and his compatriots are improvised champions. “I built a diversion, a special hose for cold water.” Both are self -employed. Gierko as a translator, Perzyna organizes international exhibitions: Banksy, Leonardo da Vinci or sometimes something about spiders.

They are well busy – and earn good money, have so far paid taxes and taxes in Germany. Nevertheless, they want to go back to Poland, Greater Warsaw. You are looking for a small house on the Internet. “8,000 Złoty per square meter,” says Gierko. “Around 1,800 euros,” she explains. On average, the prices are slightly lower than in the bacon belt around Berlin, but there are no worlds in between.

Leasing contract after eight minutes

Getting a loan is not a problem – at least in Poland. Gierko says that in Germany she hasn’t even got a leasing contract for a car. It is independent, economically successful, pay high taxes and fixed costs, for example to the health insurance – “and yet I got the answer that I was not creditworthy”.

She adds slightly ironic: “Although the merits are apparently not that bad when the taxes are relatively in the way.” She still got a leasing contract – but only in Poland. “Maximum by phone, after seven, eight minutes,” explains her husband.

Five years of Berlin were enough

Back in Warsaw is Jacek Dehlinel. He endured it in Berlin for less than five years. He had left Poland in 2020. Because of homophobia in parts of society and because the candidate of the right PIS party had won the presidential election.

Dehnel is a writer, confessing gay and married his partner. At that time both were looking forward to Berlin and Germany. Above all, he appreciated the liberal openness of the city. But the country has sobered him.

“Failed State” Germany?

“I have the impression that Germany is a ‘failed state’ in relation to everyday quality of life,” he says. A “failed country”. A term that is usually used in media more for states such as Somalia, Yemen or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Places where the state has lost control of its territory.

In contrast to the countries mentioned, he wants to know the term “failed state” slightly ironic – because in contrast to the countries mentioned, the state has too much control than too little. For everything you have to make an application that the offices are uncooperative, bureaucratic – and usually not digitally accessible.

“The state is harassed”

He can tell long stories from German corridors. They usually end up with the fact that nothing is clarified – or that the solution is to have to make the same application anew every quarter. And if you want something in English, you will sometimes be rejected directly.

His impression is “that the German society is used to the fact that the state is harassing it in this way – and considering it as normal.” In trouble with any offices, the control system is complicated. He states: “And everyone takes this as a matter of course in life.”

Müdemach bureaucracy

Stretch and his husband actually wanted to wait and see how Poland is developing politically. “But the struggle with the German bureaucracy was now so exhausting, and we were so tired of all that we decided not to wait anymore,” he says.

Now they are back. Dehnel says that in Poland he has the impression of “constant growth, improvement, modernization, relief and optimization of everyday life”. In view of his experiences, on the other hand, he combines “constant complication, a creeping decay”.

Numbers confirm the impression – at least as far as economic growth is concerned. Since 2015, Poland has regularly increased annual growth of around five percent. Germany’s record year in this decade: plus 2.7 percent. And that was eight years ago.

End of the Migration path?

Last year, according to the figures, this collapsed, which demographers and statisticians call a “migration path”: a long trend of immigration from a certain country into another. Immigration with tradition, on a path that many have previously gone.

Germany had recorded an immigration plus from Poland since the beginning of the 1980s. Only in the middle of the 1990s, the influx was somewhat. As a rule, however, several tens of thousands of people came from Poland to Germany more than the other way around. This now seems to be over: minus 11,239 people, the Federal Statistical Office shows as a balance for the past year.

Poland picks up

Nils Witte from the Federal Institute for Population Research does not see any statistical outliers, rather a logical consequence of the development in the neighboring country. And it is economically better than that in Germany: “This is also something that is actually so desired in the European Union that the markets gradually align themselves,” says Witte. “And that’s exactly what happens.”

The Polish economy is getting to German. And on closer inspection of the numbers, it shows how much Germany’s attractiveness has suffered. Witte notes “that the number of people who abandon Germany towards Poland has remained constant. What has changed: fewer Poles come to Germany.”

German employers are worried, since the Poles have been helping for years to relieve the lowering of workers in many industries. In the care industry, on the construction and in many other areas.

Role model in the east?

A comparatively many Poles work in Brandenburg. Some have moved to Germany, but many simply commute to work every day. But it is becoming increasingly difficult for employers to recruit Polish employees, reports André Fritsche, general manager of the IHK Cottbus.

When he talks from the neighboring country, you can get the impression that he is enthusiastic. “Poland is now in 20th place in the global economy worldwide.” The country is now clearly “an attractive location for many to go back again”. At Fritsche, Poland almost sounds like a role model for Brandenburg: “This is something that we of course want here in the region: that people are returning.”

In Berlin, Zbyszek Perzyna points again on the defective shower: “The last specialist was here about ten or eleven years ago, looked at it and said that he has to get something out of the car again,” says Perzyna and shrugs. You would still wait for him today.

With material from Magdalena Karpinska, WDR