Only the Czech Republic is ahead of Poland in the ranking of European Union countries with the lowest risk of poverty and social marginalization of foreigners from outside the EU. In our country, this percentage is 15 percent, while in the Czech Republic it is 10 percent. The average across the European Union is much higher and reaches as much as 45 percent – according to Eurostat data summarizing 2019. According to Personnel Service experts, this result is one of the reasons for the unflagging attractiveness of our country in the eyes of immigrants, even in times of a raging pandemic.

The highest risk of poverty or social exclusion for non-EU citizens is in Sweden and Greece (57 percent each) as well as France and Spain (54 percent each).

“In 2019, the Czech Republic removed Poland from the title of the country with the lowest risk of excluding people from outside the EU. However, we are still at the forefront, which means that foreigners, mainly from Ukraine, willingly come to work with us. Emigration in 2020 weakened only slightly. As a country, we dealt with the pandemic quite well, and the provisions of the anti-crisis shield stopped many immigrants in Poland. If the currently implemented vaccination program progresses successfully and also covers a wider group of immigrants, it can be expected that also this year we will not have to deal with the outflow of staff from the East,” Krzysztof Inglot, President of Personnel Service and an expert on the labor market, said.

Interestingly, in 2019 in Poland, poverty and social exclusion posed a greater threat to the citizens of the country than to foreigners. For native residents, this risk was estimated at 18 percent. The situation was similar in the Czech Republic, where foreigners had less chance of being excluded than the country's residents (11 percent), although the difference was smaller here.

(WBJ)