How Nawrocki wants to make life harder for Ukrainians in Poland

The Ukrainian community in Poland barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief after President Karol Nawrocki signed a new version of the law "On Assistance to Citizens of Ukraine", when on 29 September he submitted to parliament a draft amendment to the Citizenship Law.

The amendments proposed by the president affect only one point of the law, but it is of huge significance for all foreigners who see their future in Poland.

Nawrocki suggests granting the right to citizenship not after three years of residence with a long-term permit, but only after ten.

Read more about what lies behind this proposal by the Polish president in the article by journalist Olena Babakova (Warsaw): Work and keep quiet: how the revision of Citizenship requirements will hit Ukrainians in Poland. 

Granting citizenship is in no way regulated by common EU law, so member states have very different requirements and practices.

In Poland, there are two ways to become a citizen other than by birth: citizenship granted by the president, usually to people of exceptional merit, who may not even reside in Poland and citizenship recognition by the relevant voivode through an administrative procedure, which requires meeting a fairly long list of conditions.

The key ones are: having a place of residence in Poland, a permanent source of income, and residing in the country for a certain number of years.

For most labour migrants, the path looks like this: first, you must live and work in Poland for five years to obtain EU long-term resident status, and after that, you can apply for citizenship in three years. In other words, if you have no Polish ancestry or Polish partner, from arrival to citizenship today takes at least eight years.

Moreover, administrative procedures in Poland are quite lengthy. It currently takes about ten months to obtain a residence card, and more than six months for citizenship applications to be processed.

Thus, most foreigners who have recently become Polish citizens are people who have lived in Poland not for eight, but for 10–12 years.

Nawrocki’s proposal would mean that this time would de jure increase to 15 years, and in practice – to 20. So, if someone migrates to Poland as a student, they’ll be lucky to get a Polish passport before the age of 40.

Despite having a migrant community of more than two million people, in 2023 and 2024 Poland granted citizenship to only about 16,000 individuals under the presidential and voivode procedures.

However, in the coming years, the number of Ukrainians eligible for Polish citizenship is expected to grow.

If until recently a significant group receiving Polish passports consisted of Ukrainians and Belarusians with Karta Polaka (Pole’s Card), now they are being overtaken by Ukrainian labor migrants who started coming to Poland in the mid-2010s.

And as early as 2027, Ukrainian migrants may have the chance to secure their own political representation in the Sejm.

This does not necessarily mean electing an MP of Ukrainian origin, but, for example, a Polish politician who would craft proposals for this electoral group.

But the prospect of a growing number of voters of Ukrainian origin has triggered hysteria among Polish right-wing forces this year.

And President Karol Nawrocki has long been courting the far right.

For the parliament, where until 2027 the majority is held by Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition and its centrist and leftist allies, there is little sense in agreeing to the president’s proposal.

On the other hand, we have already seen several times how a topic related to migration can become heavily politicised in Poland.