Finance Poland Ukrainian

Oprac.: Nadija Hałuszka

04.08.2026, 16:04

5 myths about Ukrainians in Poland that fall apart at the first contact with numbers

04/08/2026

Nadija Hałuszka

“One day of work is enough for a Ukrainian to receive a Polish pension.” “Ukrainians push Poles out of queues in hospitals.” “Migrants take jobs and lower wages.” These statements are repeated in the Polish internet so often that they have come to seem obvious — even though none of them withstands confrontation with official statistics from ZUS, NFZ or the police. Let’s break down five of the most popular narratives one by one — not because it is pleasant, but because each of them has a specific, verifiable answer.

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The mechanism in each of the five cases is the same: a real legal mechanism or a real number is taken — and then stripped of its context, without which that number means something completely different.

Myth 1. “One day of work is enough to receive a Polish pension”

This is a classic semantic manipulation, combining two completely different legal mechanisms: acquiring the right to any pension and the right to a supplement to the minimum pension. The Polish pension system, reformed in 1999, operates on the principle of defined contribution: anyone who has paid even a single contribution and reaches retirement age (60 for women, 65 for men) will receive a benefit — this applies to Poles and foreigners on equal terms. However, the amount is calculated by dividing the accumulated capital by the average life expectancy. For one day of work ZUS will not pay the full minimum pension, but a few grosz or zlotys per year.

The Polish-Ukrainian social security agreement of 2012 allows adding up years of work in both countries — solely to determine whether a person meets the minimum service threshold (20 years for women, 25 for men). ZUS does not pay for years worked in Ukraine: if a woman worked 19 years in Ukraine and one year in Poland, ZUS will calculate the benefit only for that one year. And the right to a top-up to the minimum level is held only by persons permanently and actually residing in Poland — ZUS strictly verifies this via Border Guard registers, and upon leaving the country the right to the top-up is immediately suspended.

The number of people to whom ZUS added to the minimum pension under the agreement with Ukraine is about one thousand two hundred nationwide — and it decreases year by year, because Ukrainians in Poland are working more and paying increasingly higher contributions themselves.

Myth 2. “Ukrainians have priority in queues to doctors”

This claim contradicts the very logic of the system. The special act of March 2022 introduced the principle of equal treatment — “zero privileges”: a Ukrainian citizen is placed on the same, publicly accessible waiting list in the AP-KOLCE system as a Polish citizen. No regulations, Ministry of Health guidelines, or orders of the NFZ president have ever provided for separate or faster queues for foreigners. In emergency departments, the order is determined solely by the patient’s health condition according to the color-based triage system — nationality or refugee status have no significance there.

The annual NFZ budget for medical services amounts to around 200–220 billion zlotys. Expenditures on treating Ukrainian refugees under the special act totaled about 750 million zlotys per year — only 0.38–0.4% of Poland’s entire healthcare budget. More than a million Ukrainians living and legally working in Poland permanently pay health insurance contributions themselves — and their total value, exceeding 3 billion zlotys, significantly surpasses the cost of treating all refugees covered by the special act.

Myth 3. “Migrants take jobs from Poles and lower wages”

The Polish labor market has been facing a deep demographic crisis for years — the population is aging, and companies lack workers. Ukrainians generally do not compete with Poles for the same positions but rather fill structural gaps — in construction, transport, logistics, manufacturing, and agriculture. A legally employed Ukrainian citizen is subject to the same Labor Code, the same minimum wage, and the same hourly rate as a Pole — the phenomenon of “working for half free” simply does not exist in the legal economy.

According to data from Eurostat, the unemployment rate in Poland has for years remained among the lowest in the entire European Union — the country regularly ranks in the top three. The presence of migrants has not caused a collapse of the labor market; on the contrary, it has protected many companies from production downtime.

Myth 4. “Refugees live only on Polish benefits and do not pay taxes”

This is one of the easiest myths to debunk if you look at reports from independent financial institutions — the Polish Economic Institute, Deloitte, EY. The conclusion is clear: revenues from taxes (PIT, CIT, VAT) and social security contributions paid by Ukrainians working in Poland exceed the costs that the Polish state incurs for social assistance, education, or healthcare for this group.

The employment rate of Ukrainian refugees in Poland (mostly women with children) is one of the highest in Europe and in the world — it is estimated at sixty to seventy percent. Migrants not only work in salaried jobs but also set up their own businesses on a large scale: in 2023, nearly every tenth new company in Poland was founded by a Ukrainian citizen. Each of them pays taxes to the central and local budgets, supporting the growth of Poland’s GDP.

Myth 5. “Ukrainians are a wave of crime”

It is true that in absolute numbers the police record more offenses involving foreigners. However, drawing the conclusion of a “wave of crime” from this is a manipulation of basic mathematics: when the population of a given group in a country increases several times over, the number of incidents involving them also rises proportionally.

Another indicator is key: the percentage share of crimes in the population of Ukrainians staying in Poland remains at a level very similar to that of the general population, and in some categories is even lower. The most common offenses among migrants are driving under the influence of alcohol and possession of prohibited substances — not assaults or robberies. This does not negate individual cases of serious crimes — they do occur, as in any society — but their number does not deviate from the norm typical for Poles.

Why are these five narratives so persistent?

The answer is simple: each of them begins with a grain of truth. Yes, statistics do indeed record more offenses involving foreigners in absolute numbers. Yes, the Ukrainian community in Poland does make use of certain social benefits. Yes, to obtain a pension, a single paid contribution is indeed sufficient. A myth does not arise out of nothing — it arises from a fact taken out of context and given a different meaning. And that is precisely what makes it durable: it is harder to refute with a single sentence than a simple fabrication.

Numbers have no biases. Only those who do not check them do.

In the article, we analyze the most frequently repeated claims concerning citizens of Ukraine living in Poland. Each of them is compared with the applicable regulations and official data from public institutions. – Ed.

Source: Nowiny Wschodnie / Obserwator Gospodarczy / Demagog.org.pl / ZUS / NFZ / Eurostat / TVN24 (Konkret24) / Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego / National Police Headquarters

Nadija Hałuszka

n.haluszka@nowinywschodnie.pl