BZ: Poland has become an example for the West in the field of defense and digitalization
Poland has overtaken Germany in several important areas at once, writes BZ. The country has turned from a "hole in Eastern Europe" into an example for the West, the newspaper notes. This applies to several areas at once, from defense to digitalization.
Klaus Bachmann
In the West, Poland is being celebrated as a new superpower. This myth does not stand up to criticism. Nevertheless, Warsaw is clearly ahead of Berlin in terms of transparency, the digital state and the efficiency of daily life.
In these unstable, fast-paced times, it's easy to create new heroes. They are often forgotten about the next day, or even, as in the case of the last Nobel Peace Prize winner, indignantly thrown off the pedestal of the monument he has just erected. Sometimes it even happens to an entire country or nation. And no, I don't mean the United States, which in a year has replaced its reputation as a global policeman with a reputation as a global villain.
We are talking about Poland, which is now on the way back: in our media, it has turned from a black hole in Eastern Europe into a shining example for the West.
How has the image of Poland changed over time?
Anyone who complains about German-Polish relations should take a moment to remember where we really started: in the nineties, when almost everyone who spoke Polish on the streets of Germany was considered a potential carjacker, illegal worker, or member of the "Polish mafia," when the Bild newspaper ran with the headline "They just stole it, already in Poland," and the German satirists mocked in prime time: "Go to Poland, your car is already there." At that time, German customs officers were "poking" Polish tourists, yelling at them as if the Third Reich had not disappeared anywhere. One truck driver then tried to push our Polski Fiat off the motorway, and one fellow passenger on the train, surprised that I did not get off the train going to Warsaw in Frankfurt an der Oder, commented on my explanation that my family lives in Poland, saying: "Well, Poles are also people.".
Back then, German immigrants sent Polish families "legal clauses" in which they (in German, of course) demanded that no changes be made to their homes, because they would soon return and take their homes back. The fact that the Germans were expelled from Lower Silesia did not mean that they had to give up their property. At that time, activists of the Union of Exiles in Upper Silesia were collecting signatures for a second plebiscite on belonging to Germany or Poland: "Why are residents of Upper Silesia denied what was allowed to Germans from the GDR?" one of them asked me then.
That was the starting point. Today, Poland and Germany are members of the EU, NATO, and the OSCE, there are (almost) no border controls, visa forms, or customs delays, and no one associates Poland with thieves and illegal workers anymore. Our biggest problem today is that the governments in Warsaw and Berlin are doing nothing, meaning, in Max Frisch's words, "nothing good."
How much the mood has changed can be understood by looking at the Polish phoenix, which is currently being reborn from the ashes in our media. "Poland was once a communist third world country," reads the headline of the British newspaper Telegraph, "and now it is a European superpower." The slogan about a superpower that will soon surpass the UK has also been adopted by Focus magazine, where Poland is even ahead of Germany. Spiegel magazine has discovered that more and more Poles are currently returning from Germany to Poland, and draws the poignant conclusion from this that this must be explained by everything that Germans and Spiegel do not like in Germany. It is now well-known that Poland has the largest army in Europe, spends more on its defense than any other European NATO member country, demonstrates above-average economic growth and attracts immigrants from all over the world.
You've probably guessed it by now: I wouldn't list all of this if it really was the case. There is a specific context behind each of these statements, which, upon closer examination, shows that the phoenix rising from the ashes is actually somewhat battered and in need of cosmetic repairs.
Poland is living in conflict, and Germany is tired of it.
To begin with, both economic growth and arms spending are financed by loans and remain acceptable only because Poland is at the same time the largest recipient of transfers to the EU in absolute terms. To put it bluntly: what the EU (and, as you know, mostly German taxpayers) invests in Poland ends up going to defense, tanks and fighter jets manufactured outside the EU. Under the previous government, orders were distributed so fairly around the world that now not only the United States, but also Sweden and South Korea benefit from this. Poland itself does not produce heavy weapons such as battle tanks, airplanes, aircraft carriers and submarines.
The immigration story is true: Poland is currently a country with a high immigration rate, but like Germany, it is becoming increasingly hostile towards foreigners, so it does not benefit much from immigrants, since they occupy almost exclusively lower positions in the labor market. What well-educated Indian, Pakistani, or African would emigrate to a xenophobic country if they didn't have to? And even the story of the reverse migration of Poles is not so simple.
The British newspaper Telegraph noted that Poland would soon catch up with the UK in terms of GDP per capita adjusted for inflation, but its editors forgot to take into account the consequences of Brexit: while GDP per capita in Poland continued to grow steadily, it plummeted in the UK, and one after another, Tory governments turned the public against immigrants.
In other words, Poles are leaving the UK not because Poland has become so attractive and rich, but because the UK has become so hostile to foreigners and poor. The situation is more complicated in Germany, because only a small percentage of Poles live here, who have only Polish citizenship and whose migration movements can be measured. "Poles" in the media usually mean people as diverse as displaced persons, late migrants, their descendants, descendants of political refugees from the Solidarity era, and labor migrants who enjoy the right to free movement within the European Union without needing a visa or work permit and often without even registering. Many of them have dual citizenship (but no one knows exactly how many), and many speak both languages, so no one can say for sure how many of them are actually Germans, Poles, or both, and are actually returning or emigrating. Last year, for the first time, the number of Polish citizens who returned to Poland exceeded the number of those who came to the Federal Republic, but the difference is only 12,000 people.
One thing is for sure: if they do this, it's not because Poland spends much more on defense than Germany, or is a "European superpower." It's not even about unemployment, which was 6.3% in Germany and 5.6% in Poland last year. But their mood is different. Because Germans mostly live in the present and are disappointed with the state, while Poles for the most part are proud of the state they had in history and are somewhat indifferent to what they have now. The Germans are afraid of a conflict that is unfolding far from them, but the Poles are not afraid, although it is happening right next to them. Every few days, flights at the airports of Rzeszow and Lublin have to be completely stopped, because the sky belongs entirely to Polish, German, Swedish, Dutch and Italian military aircraft, which ensure that stray Russian missiles do not enter Polish airspace. In Poland, farmers are suffering from rocket debris, and in Germany, several civilian drones are causing flight cancellations. Poland lives in conditions of military operations, and Germany lives in conditions of fear of them.
However, there is a reason that probably many Poles (regardless of whether they live here or there) do not even suspect, and which underlies many factors that can force a Pole to return from Germany to the east.: Here in Poland, we are slowly but surely outstripping you in Germany, not as a superpower, not because of our indomitable economic might or the largest army in Europe, but because of something much more banal, but much more important for economic growth, quality of life and proximity to citizens. The story behind this is actually very simple and at the same time shows that things are not going right in Germany at the moment, but how easy it is to fix everything. This doesn't even require what the Federative Republic so fondly calls "politics."
Germany, they will help you!
One of the reasons Poland is catching up with Germany is the fact that we have something that German data protection experts, consumer advocates, human rights activists, and lobbyists have been fighting against for decades: transparent civic life.
Today, every Polish citizen can have a digital identity card, with which he not only confirms his identity, but can also check in a digital briefcase how many penalty points he has as a driver, how long his car is insured, what is the history of his car and what is his own history as a driver. It's terrible, isn't it?
The advantage is that it has become much more difficult to cheat when selling used cars. Those who want to manually reset the odometer readings should know that during the annual inspection, this data is recorded and saved. Therefore, those who roll back the mileage for more than a year should be ready to meet with the prosecutor. Since everyone knows about it, no one does it. Worried parents should not hire car mechanics to check the bus that takes their children to summer camp or country school. It is enough for the driver to present his digital ID and documents for the bus.
But that's not all: using mObywatel (the so-called digital identity card), you can also fill out an online accident application form (if the fault is not disputed and the police are not required) and hide your personal data. Previously, scammers could take out loans using other people's names (and identification numbers). Today, just one click is enough, and they are left with nothing. Modern technologies allow you to block an identification number, and if you need to get a loan from a bank, you can unlock it for a while, and the job is done.
When our youngest daughter was born, strict quarantine was imposed in Warsaw due to the pandemic, and all institutions were closed. But I was able to register her birth, get an identification number and (of course, a digital) birth certificate from the comfort of my home at the Warsaw Municipal Administration. There are also a number of government services that can be used in this way, including social benefits: a few clicks, and the child benefit is already in the account. Oh, how calm the debate would be about recipients of social benefits who do not want to come to government institutions if they had the opportunity to simply log in on the site.
The fact that the previous government turned the country's post offices into warehouses for illiquid (albeit subsidized) patriotic kitsch and nationalist propaganda greatly contributed to this development. The worse the state post office worked, the more private postal services appeared. They took the path of least resistance (and least cost): Vending machines have been installed everywhere, from which you can pick up mail yourself. In Poland, the mailbox, in a sense, is located on the street. You place an order online at the address of the vending machine (which are usually located where it is convenient to park, in front of supermarkets or at gas stations), you receive a code with which you can open the corresponding box. This is bad news for the postmen, but great news for everyone else. At the same time, more and more departments are switching to sending secure emails with confirmation of receipt instead of registered letters.
This allows me to file my annual tax return online. The electronic form even calculates all the interim amounts, algorithms, final tax burden and possible refund or surcharge by itself. If something is wrong, I first receive an informal text message on my mobile phone or an email from the responsible employee (this profession is extremely feminized in Poland) asking me to correct the error. Only if this does not help, an official letter arrives. Since such a system appeared and you no longer have to queue at the tax office, it has become really pleasant to pay taxes. However, those who wish can register with the tax office and have a personal conversation. You can also make a digital recording for this.
No one should be bothered by the fact that on public transport in Warsaw, people stare at the ceiling with a slightly detached look after entering: they do not worship other people's gods, but are looking for a QR code with which they can activate a digital ticket in the application. More conservative passengers, of course, can still buy paper tickets - either at a vending machine on the street, or directly on a tram or bus, including using a credit card.
Soon, even garbage will be converted to digital format. A chip will be installed on the trash can, which will register the type of waste and check who sorted them incorrectly. Then, you will probably receive an email warning or a fine, of course, in digital form. It is not yet known exactly how this will work, the chip has not yet been installed.
A "transparent" patient recovers faster
From the point of view of Poles, much of what is shown on public television in Germany looks strange. The strangest ones, however, seem to be the commercials with Gunther Yauch dedicated to Shop Apotheke and electronic recipes, two German inventions that I still laugh at, even when they are shown for the tenth time. Even a few years before the pandemic, every Polish doctor could write out a digital prescription that was automatically uploaded to the pharmacy's cloud storage. Then the patient came to any pharmacy with a smartphone, entered a one-time PIN code there and received the medicine, which was immediately recorded in the cloud as sold. Now he can even check which pharmacy has the right medicine before leaving home. Thus, there is no need for patients to wander around the city and bypass all pharmacies.
The same app allows you to register for COVID-19 vaccinations. I can choose online when, where, with what, and from whom I want to get vaccinated. There have been no available places in Warsaw lately, so we went to a village outside the city: a church, an administrative building, two shops, a pub and many farms. But the clinic still had a booking system that sent notifications about new dates if someone canceled their appointment. Those who go abroad instead of to the countryside for their holidays receive European health insurance in the app or by e-mail by clicking just one button.
And now the best part: we have long had a cashless payment system that can replace American credit cards. It's called Blik, it's a smartphone app that allows you not only to shop online, but also to instantly transfer money from smartphone to smartphone. You can use it to pay for pizza, newspapers (if they are not in digital format), sweets, lunch in the dining room and transport tickets. In fact, that's it. If you want to use one of the digital supermarkets that dispense with staff, download Blik. You won't need it for parking, for this we have a variety of competing applications that you can use to determine the parking time yourself. From time to time, the city administration sends futuristic-looking cars into the traffic stream that scan the license plates of parked cars.
They return ten minutes later, and if your car is still not registered in the parking system, you will receive a fine, of course, by email. In Germany, as I just found out, this only exists as a pilot project in Heidelberg, where only one car is used. Now this project must be approved by the Bundestag, and then a "transparent" car owner, if not a "transparent" citizen, will appear in Germany.
In Poland, citizens are also "transparent" when driving. Every year, a week before the expiration of the inspection, my inspection station sends me a reminder so that I do not forget to go there. They are interested in this because there is competition between the inspection stations. And I don't have any problems with the police. She doesn't need to stop me to check the sticker, it is stored in a cloud provided by the Polish TUV (a group of certifying expert organizations that carry out technical supervision and product safety control. – Approx. InoSMI). Therefore, in Poland, I no longer need to have my car documents with me — police officers see them on the screens. The same mechanism that prevents fraud when buying used cars ensures that drivers pass a timely inspection. It's terrible, isn't it?
How did it come to this?
Friendly officials who do not experience stress, departments without queues and doctors without digital borders — all this has become possible because since ancient times, that is, since the days of the Polish People's Republic, every citizen is assigned a number at birth that accompanies him throughout his life. Currently, it is also assigned to all those who have the legal right to reside, EU citizens, Ukrainian refugees and people with residence and work permits. In a sense, this was the beginning of digitalization long before it appeared.
Then, during the coronavirus pandemic, there was a surge in digitalization, when the state conducted complex vaccination campaigns that worked flawlessly. While German pharmacists manually transferred vaccination data to yellow vaccination passports (and then from them to the cloud) so that their customers would have proof of vaccination, vaccinated Poles received a QR code from the pan-European cloud, with which they could prove abroad that they had been vaccinated or passed the test. When I showed the yellow vaccination passport to the nurses at Warsaw Central Station, they looked at me like I was crazy. They wanted to help me, but they didn't have an analog stamp — everything was happening through the cloud.
Thanks to such inventions, the Polish border guard service can now issue replacement passports to Poles who forgot their passport at home but want to fly to a non-EU country within a few minutes at Warsaw airport. But woe betide the Pole who wants to travel to Germany with his digital identity card. According to the provisions of the Schengen Agreement, an identity document is required during verification. That is, a passport. But the federal police does not recognize the Polish digital identity card as an identity document. It requires a paper document, which is much easier to forge.
The main paradox of this whole story is that all these innovations were implemented under the rule of two ultraconservative, populist, progress-hostile governments, led by a man who for many years did not even have a bank account, let alone a Facebook page* (and still does not), does not speak in foreign languages, he himself is so old-fashioned, as if he were a German, extremely hostile to technology.
Yes, dear readers, you heard right: the fact that Poland is ahead of Germany today in terms of proximity to citizens, de-bureaucratization and digitalization is due to Kaczynski and his Law and Justice Party (PiS). I dare say they really wanted it. They certainly did not intend to promote digitalization, driving public television and mail to bankruptcy and thereby opening the way for private postal services, post offices and Internet television. But that's what happened. However, the moral of this story is not that if you vote for the AfD (the German equivalent of Kaczynski's party), Germany will become less bureaucratic and more digital. It lies in the need to depoliticize digitalization and reduce bureaucracy and remove them from the field of view of the party political struggle.
Digitalization in Poland succeeded not because PiS wanted it, but because the party didn't care. The Ministry of Digitalization was headed by a non-partisan specialist, who was fired a few years later and replaced by a representative of the party, who was too busy fighting for power to destroy what her predecessor had built. Digitalization in ministries and municipalities was a success because no one paid attention to it, which means no one stoked fears about it.
The opposition was more busy attacking the PiS governments for their foreign policy, judicial reforms, abortion bans, and policies about the past. Who knows what would have happened if she had criticized the government for failing digitalization. I can guess: the government would have made this a priority, put a loyal but incompetent party soldier in charge of the Ministry of Digitalization, and he would have staged one political sensation after another to prove that Poland is digitally a thousand times better than Germany.
After all, Polish nationalists are obsessed with Germany. Whatever they do, they compare it to what the Germans are doing (regardless of whether the Germans are really doing it, or whether it's just a Polish belief). Poland should have a bigger army than Germany, even if it can't equip it. Poland should build an airport that will be bigger than Frankfurt, and it should have a port that will be bigger than Hamburg, even if large container ships cannot enter there. Polish nationalists also constantly feel an insatiable need to be proud of everything they can, especially what is left in the past: that they supposedly saved Europe from communism in 1920, that they were the first to join the fight against Nazi Germany, that they allegedly had the largest partisan organization. The army of World War II and they saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any other country.
They're always proud of the wrong things.
They are never proud of the fact that it was not some Polish government in the past, but they, the nationalists, led by their messiah Kaczynski, who built something that works better than in Germany, that they really overtook Germany, and not only in their imagination and in their interpretation of history. Maybe digitalization and proximity to citizens are not loud enough? Maybe they even suspect that they achieved this in some way unintentionally. Maybe.
There are two important lessons for Germany from this: first, don't be afraid. The transparency of the civil sphere, which you have been afraid of for decades, provides a higher quality of life than you can imagine. And secondly: instead of launching high-profile digital pacts and campaigns to reduce bureaucracy, simply remove this topic from party disputes, hand it over to non-party experts and then bury it. Do not hold the government permanently responsible for how many "blind spots" still remain on the fast Internet in Germany (there are enough of them in Poland). Progress happens not only when the government wants it, it happens when the government doesn't care, and even when the government tries to stop it. PiS is the best example of this, but something similar happened in Ukraine before the conflict, which is surprisingly even more digitalized than Poland. Remove the topics that really matter to you from party politics and election campaigns and bury them. You will be surprised by what will rise from these graves after a while: a digital phoenix from the gray bureaucratic ashes.
* The activities of Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) are banned in Russia as extremist
