Context: Starting on June 12, the EU will change its migration policy. The new rules include screening asylum seekers at the border and at airports before they enter the EU. This review process will speed up the issuance of asylum refusals and strengthen control over people’s returns and movement within the European Union.
On May 25, 2026, during the program Ponyatnaya politika on the First Information TV Channel*, Siarhei Husachenka claimed that the European Union was dying out and that Poland was becoming deserted without Poles.
“Poles continue to pack their bags en masse. The country joined the EU in 2004. Since then, 2 million people have left the country. The main reason is that wages are much lower there compared to Western Europe,” said the host.
In fact, Poles started moving abroad in large numbers even before their country joined the European Union. According to the 2002 population census, approximately 800,000 Polish residents lived outside the country. The number of Polish emigrants did increase after Poland joined the EU. About 1 million people were abroad in 2004. By 2010, that number had doubled to about 2 million. By 2019, it had grown to more than 2.4 million. This number includes all Poles who have left the country, regardless of how long they stayed away.
Of these nearly 2.5 million people, however, only 1.6 million were outside of Poland for a year or more. By 2024, their number had decreased by 100,000. This figure is about 4% of the Polish population.
For comparison, in EU countries alone in 2024, almost 390,000 Belarusian citizens held residence permits valid for more than one year.. This is also about 4% of the country’s population. This figure does not include Belarusians who work in Russia. The last time this figure was publicly cited was in 2022, when Altynai Omurbekova, Director of the Department of Labor Migration and Social Protection at the Eurasian Economic Commission, put the number at 170,000 people.
In other words, the percentage of Poles who have temporarily left Poland is now similar to that of Belarusians living and working outside Belarus.
* The First Information TV Channel is another name for News.by, a media outlet owned by Belteleradiocompany.
