Barbara Socha is the deputy minister of family, labor, and social policy of Poland, and government representative for the demographic policy.
How important is family policy for the Polish government?
Social policy has changed a lot since the United Right coalition came to power eight years ago led by Law and Justice (PiS). We call it the DNA of our government. It is very important for us because before the situation of families in Poland was very poor. When you look at Eurostat statistics, we were at the bottom of the queue in child poverty and child exclusion, something that happened not only in unemployed families, but also in cases where both spouses were working. So the situation was very bad because of high unemployment and low wages. Now, if we look at the statistics, we see that Poland is the second European country with the lowest child poverty.
On the other hand, like the whole of Europe, we have a great demographic challenge. This is very dangerous for our future and we have prepared a strategy after our first years in government, a strategy for the next twenty years to change—or to influence the change of—the birth rate. Our main goal is to make Poland the best place for families. It is not only about improving security and financial support for families, as we did with the 500+ plan—which from January will be increased by 60% to become 800+—but about improving all facets of life that influence the conditions for families: housing policies, stability, and flexibility of the labour market. Moreover, Polish society is very hard working; we have one of the hardest working nations in Europe. We have a lot of overtime hours and this is something that does not help. My personal challenge is to influence the labour market to be able to offer part-time work, which is almost non-existent in Poland and surrounding countries as a result of the communist era, where there was no flexibility. Now this is changing, and it is also necessary to work on social acceptance, otherwise fewer women will decide to have children—without forgetting that the birth rate policy is related to tax policies, cooperation with municipalities, and support for pro-family NGOs.
You talk about a 20-year strategy, since demographic change is always a long-term goal. But are you satisfied with what has been achieved so far?
Yes and no. This is a revolution, and we still have a long way to go—maybe not in the sense of financial support, but we have to focus on the first three years of the child, which is when the income gap occurs as maternity and parental leaves come to an end. And there is the challenge of combining the return to work with childcare, and also another revolution in terms of the number of institutional childcares, which is still not enough. And—what is more important for me—we don’t want to force women to go back to work too quickly and leave the children in kindergarten, because we know that a good part of Polish families prefer to extend the time with their children.
The results of the 500+ programme are very visible from different perspectives. On the demographic level, the number of births has not fallen as expected, and this saved us from being in a worse situation. The programme has also made it possible for couples to have children earlier and, at the same time, encouraged them to have more children, so we see more families with four or five children. We make it possible for young people who dream of having many children to make it happen, which is very satisfying; and another positive aspect is that it has helped women to improve their economic situation and get better salaries. In the last eight years, for a woman with two children, the income has almost tripled. It is a huge difference.
When you launched this programme, did you have the support of other parties? Is the opposition in favour of birth policies?
The answer depends on the moment. When we presented the idea in the election campaign eight years ago, Plataforma opposed it because they said there was no money for it and that it would make women leave the labour market. What happened was precisely the opposite, and we see that women’s work has increased. Now, in the middle of the election campaign, nobody dares to say that they want to stop this programme because that would mean losing a lot of support. But the truth is that we see different parties agreeing not to commit themselves to maintaining these policies. Of course, it is clear to us that, if we lose the elections, the social and pro-family policies will be cancelled. In my opinion, I think that when some opposition leaders talk about throwing money from a helicopter, they have no idea what these policies mean.
Perhaps it is because they do not think about what Poland will be like in the future, but only about how to win elections.
Yes, they have no vision at all. We have a very clear vision: we want to make Poland the best place for families from all perspectives. And this, of course, includes security. We have to take into account that we have Russia very close to our borders, especially now with the war in Ukraine. It is very important for us to protect our eastern borders, which are also NATO’s and the EU’s, while the opposition wants to tear down the wall we have built on the border with Belarus. And on the other hand, we have the migration package pushed by the European Commission which was vetoed by our Prime Minister Moraviecki in Grenada. It is very clear to us that this is a huge mistake for Europe, a mistake that we do not want to copy and that will create a very dangerous situation for European citizens. It is a problem that we do not have in Poland and that we do not want to have in the future. We need to solve the migration problem in a different way, by not allowing illegal immigrants to enter Europe.
Poland has faced an unprecedented influx of refugees due to the Russian invasion. How have you managed this crisis?
Right now there are a million Ukrainians in Poland, working and paying taxes, and they are a positive influence on our economy. Before the Russian attack, there were already many Ukrainians working in Poland—mostly men, and now we have mostly women and children. As a country, as a society, we understand very well what it is like to be attacked by Russia because it is also part of our history. And I think that this solidarity with Ukrainian women and children—and this is something I want to emphasise because it is not about young men who have fled Ukraine in order not to fight—has been a joint effort of everybody: of the central government, of the municipalities, of NGOs, and citizens who took refugees in their houses, etc. These were refugees, and this situation has nothing to do with illegal immigrants. The people who are now arriving in Lampedusa, in Italy, do not belong to our civilisation and it is not possible to assimilate them. Assimilation is a utopian idea. As we have seen in the last decades throughout almost all European countries, it simply does not happen. And we see it now, too, in all European cities where the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel is being celebrated. Allowing illegal immigration does not solve any problem; it creates many more. That is why we must help them in their home countries, and not let them make such a dangerous journey to Europe.
