Costs and benefits of labor mobility between the EU and the Eastern Partnership Countries : the case of Poland

Poland is a country being exposed to emigration and immigration flows relatively recently. That, among others, results in not fully developed yet institutional infrastructure for managing especially the immigrants flow. In this paper we structure all existing data and other pieces of information on immigrants coming to Poland from the EU Eastern Partnership Countries (EAPs). The vast majority of all types of immigrants from these countries actually originate in Ukraine. On the other hand also a vast majority of them come to Mazowieckie (Warsaw) Voivodeship. The study also confirms Poland is often not a destination country for immigrants. Many of them flow further to the old member states due to the same driver, namely income disparities existing both between EAPs and Poland as well as between Poland and the EU old member states. Nevertheless, the study shows moderate positive impact of immigration fitting demand mostly in agriculture, construction and household services. We analyse an impact of immigration on the domestic labour market in Poland. The immigrants fill gaps existing due to relatively strong and sustained growth contributing to Poland's welfare growth and also due to large scale emigration from Poland to EU old member states. Regulations applying to the immigrants coming to Poland adopted in 2007-2008 are still in force today. They create institutional infrastructure contributing to increasing scale of employment immigration to Poland. There is no sign the regulations will be substantially changed in the future. We rather expect a step by step development of the currently applied immigration policy.