„Poland is the largest beneficiary of EU funds 2014-2020, with one in four euro going to Poland“
https://www.gov.pl/web/funds-regional-policy/poland-at-the-f...
I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.
Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries. I know people all over Europe. I currently live in Germany. Germany benefits a lot from the EU. Yes it costs money. But there's trade, access to skilled labour, etc. as well. And if you look at Poland, it's what sits between Germany and Belarus & Ukraine. So, there's a strategic relevance as well. Poland doing fine is good for everyone else in the EU.
I don't know. I want to agree with you, but a large part of the economic growth in Poland is off-shoring and cheap tax (~12% on contract) for tech workers. The average tech wage there now is pretty similar to the UK, and I don't really see many startups there - probably in part because of how bureaucratic their business system can be. I don't know if this influx of foreign money from off-shoring and surge in real estate pricing is sustainable or good in the long run.
Other than a massive influx of overdevelopment of flats in the cities (sometimes too rushed, I've seen reports of flat blocks subsiding because of cutting corners), I'm not sure where else the increase it.
1) it's within the EU, so no import/export taxes or limitations
2) Poland didn't fuck up it's electricity (a certain neighbor of Poland that used to house a lot of industry is "encountering difficulties" in this regard)
3) 60% to 70% the average wage that you get even in Greece (for comparison: wages in Greece are 1/3 to 1/4th for the same job in Brussels, in the same currency) (oh and you get 50% extra at the EU commission compared to working in Brussels too, because mostly tax-free, which makes factory wages in Poland less than a FIFTH what you make as a secretary in the EU commission)
Even a French drug lord famously got caught moving production to Poland.
So yeah ... best of luck if you're a car factory worker in France or Germany. I'm told in Germany you'll make more on unemployment, when you've not turned up to the unemployment office for 6 months (which is not OK and will get your benefits reduced, but not to zero), than if you had a full time job in Poland. Oh, and aside from rents, Poland is not much cheaper than Eastern Germany.
The question is whether growth is objective and fair or whether it is not.
For comparison of wealth in Poland, ALL net-subsidies would have to be deducted, because this is essentially wealth taken from other countries, and distributed to poorer areas in the EU. I am not disputing that this leads to more growth; I am disputing the "country xyz is now rich" while not even mentioning the subsidies. And that reuters article does not mention that at all.
It also has to be mentioned because the crazy bureaucrats in Brussels want to aggressively expand eastwards. They think that the richer areas in the EU need to pay for that expansion. I simply fail to agree with that "logic" at all and I also consider it hugely unfair to richer areas. The richer areas made good decisions; now this is being negated by bureaucrats in Brussels. That is unfair. (This is not meant against Poland, but against the constant expansionistic agenda from Brussels.)
Imperialism and stealing from Jews were also among those "good" decisions. Yes I know it's not all bad, but neither is it all good. It's very reductionist to describe the imbalance like this.
This is something I tell people I am generally politically/socially align with (liberals/progressives) when they start talking about “handouts for red states.” California and other areas were not developed on their own, they required years of sustained federal investment and interest in the area.
It obviously goes without saying that conservatives in the US need to stop demonizing taxes so much for the same reason/they need to recognize that as the some of the largest beneficiaries of federal tax dollars they are cutting their nose to spite their face (I believe Kentucky is still the most subsidized state in the US).
All of us should want our states cooperation with the federal government so we can all rise together, and we need to view investing in our neighbors as a collective good.
If they were to ask where you think this "federal investment" funding came from, what would you reply?
In a similar way, Western Europe benefited from a lot of investment after WW2, while Eastern Europe didn't receive the same investment then.
So the recent investment OP mentioned is just balancing the scales.
Did you recently crossed borders? On many the checks are there again, because of fear of immigration terrorism or something, so the people could see, politicians were doing something to make them feel safe (but what I could see when passing borders, especially between poland and germany, were looong lines of trucks, so much for free flowing goods).
Not sure of the current situation, though, but last summer and autumn was horrible with checks (probably still better than what was before, but having experienced the real open border situation, having them restricted again is frustrating).
Quick ID check happened once - when I was traveling with bus across border.
Back in a days it was a lot, lot slower and more detailed.
Oh for sure, I have childhood memories of the really dark time, but it is way worse now, than it was back in 2015. I missed flixbus connections because of intense checks and changed vacation plans avoiding long waiting times at borders within EU (my recommendation, cross at night).
Another argument: Poland's GDP had already been growing at a similar pace before it joined the EU (but after it got rid of communism).
Also, the reason you've given doesn't explain why it worked so much better for Poland than for Czechia, Slovakia and a few others.
It's hard to see the other paths they could be on tho. One person's failure is another's raging success. It might be a bit like the way we take a peace for granted, because we can't internalize the cost of all the ways it could have been worse.
There are also crowds of young anti-woke Poles claiming that Poland should leave EU because we would be better without it and claiming that EU is puppet of Germany. I've also seen opinions that Israel is a puppet of Poland, aimed at Israelis. If you want to, you will see all opinions you could imagine.
On the contrary. Since the EU has no meaningful penalty mechanism other than withholding funds, and enormous capacity for shared damage absorption, once a country passes a certain threshold of development membership in the EU actually encourages government misbehavior including democratic backsliding, because it insulates the government from many potential adverse consequences.
For example, governments around the world have to fear violent revolution. But in the EU, the shared desire for law and order is so strong that the rest of the members are likely to support a member state in repressing such a revolution with essentially any degree of brutality, regardless of the condition of that state’s democracy, because the alternative (a successful coup in an EU member state) is impossible to contemplate.
Furthermore, as the GP hints, EU funds earmarked for Poland don't necessarily remain in Poland as investment. Much of that money circulates back into the pockets of contributing countries. You have to look at the entire paper trail to understand where money is actually ending up.
Also worth noting: Poland didn't receive a dime of reparations after the War. Germany (and with later contribution by the Soviets) had unleashed such mind-boggling destruction on Polish cities, towns, cultural inheritance, industry, etc. that only the so-called Swedish Deluge matches or exceeds this devastation.
The EU presents certain clear economic benefits for member countries. Nobody disputes that. But the patronizing and paternalistic narrative of some countries - reminiscent of their goofy rationalizations for their occupation of that region during the 19th century - need to go away.
[1] https://www.pap.pl/en/news/poland-largest-recipient-eu-funds...
This is not a "present" given to Poland. This is ensuring a better life for all Europeans.
But the result is inarguably positive. Those countries had only recently become democracies after decades of military dictatorships or otherwise unstable third-world style governments. Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects, and their democracies are well established and functioning.
The EU doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it transformed the continent. People have forgotten how nearly all European countries were in a very bad shape after WWII. Fascists had remained in power in Spain and Portugal. Soviets were orchestrating communist takeovers in countries like Italy. It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.
The EU is very turning major capital cities into complete shitholes. My city of youth, Brussels, is now a 3rd world hellhole where religious extremism (and not a christian one) reigns undisputed king and where drug-dealing cartels are running the show.
I fled that city.
> It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.
We'll see how well the economic order "won" once there won't be enough money to pay for pensions and once islamists are going to take political power. 25% of Brussels is now bearded men and veiled women (and that number was near to 0% when I was a kid: so in my lifetime my native city turn from 0% to 25% muslims): if you think this shall lead to anything else than the "economic order" we're seeing in islamic country, you're a fool.
France is currently importing about 500 000 people per year, mostly from muslim countries, and it's estimated only 10% of these people are ever going to find work.
I find the EU's stance totally myopic and they're destroying the western culture with totally uncontrolled immigration, while handing the keys to the kingdom to religious extremists.
You mention WWII and fascists and communists: we got rid of those. But only to replace those with islamist extremism, which have already taken several cities, like Brussels.
So, no, the war against deadly ideologies ain't done yet and it's way too early to claim victory.
It's also quite thick to claim amazing "dynamic economies" when in USD the EU hasn't seen any grow since the 2008 financial crisis, at the same time where both the US and China skyrocketed. The EU is barely countering inflation and it's doing that at the cost of massive public debt increase.
I don't have the same reading of you at all as to what's happening in the EU.
I see the EU falling into both irrelevancy and islamism (btw islamism is already a major talking point of the next french elections, where two candidates are critizicing the "entrisme islamique" for the subject becomes very hard to ignore).
No growth since 2008 (in USD and inflation adjusted). Hardly any company in the Top 100.
A failure of a continent.
But I’ll clarify that I wrote that Spain, Portugal and Greece specifically have become dynamic economies in the context of the EU. Spain has grown at a consistent 3% for a decade. Of course the far-right argues that it’s the wrong kind of growth because it’s fueled by immigration (backwards-looking political movements prefer zero growth and a shrinking population if it means less people of the color they don’t like).
You can't just attribute everything the user describes to Islam. Malaysia is a majority Muslim country, you might even see plenty of bearded men and veiled women around, and it's also extremely successful and very far from a "shithole" full of religious extremism.
This is a failure of the overregulated labor market in countries like France. This kind of pervasive societal dysfunction also helps explain how violent religious extremism can end up being attractive among people who are systemically marginalized and shut out from any real opportunities.
(The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
Ofcourse Christ conservatives hate it.
They are still getting half of what Belgium is getting and unlike the overwhelming majority of bureaucrats in Brussels Polish farmers actually produce something useful.
I rather have workers get the money than more corporate welfare.
Some capitalists create enormous value, some destroy it, some are essentially passive recipients of returns generated by others.
Capitalists provide real productive functions like capital allocation, risk-bearing, founding, governance, monitoring, etc.
Capitalists are completely useless when they have no workers, so I don't understand your points outside of "wow capitalists require a lot of workers to exist."
Hence the rush towards LLM systems, the dream of perpetual labor machine is too enticing.
There is also no risks for capitalists, do we live on the same planet where the stated US economic policy isn't to socialize the risks and privatize the gains?
As someone who has lived in both countries its such a hilarious anxiety.
https://georank.org/assets/img/charts/economy/poland/slovaki...
Meh, idk what magic maths they pull, but any other sources I find do not corroborate their graph.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352708343/figure/fi...
https://dimiter.eu/Visualizations_files/cee/gdppc_country.pn...
The lion share of this budget is defrauded only slightly less than in Hungary.
At least Poland does it legally.
Some moron always show up with the "but it was all the EU subsidies" talking point, which is quite frankly part of racist tropes of eastern Europeans being dumb and worse than westerners. Could you imagine them accomplishing anything on their own? That's ridiculous. It's us, the western saviors, who did this with our penny subsidies!
And yes, my own take why this does happen is that there was certain order to the region in the past centuries - the West was modern and wealthy, the East was backwards and poor and all was in its natural place. This new situation is unfamiliar and needs a sort of explanation that would preserve the balance somehow. In short, they cope.
Of course these countries have 5-10m inhabitants so in term of raw GDP and industrial power they can't compete
https://georank.org/economy/bulgaria/hungary
Ireland were in a similar position for instance (received €40bn in EU subsidies in the first 45 years of membership; now a net contributor).
EDIT: Net contributions seem to be $3bn/year (total, independent of tech) while loss for other EU countries due to corporate tax evasion is $6bn/year.
When Western countries got money via the Marshal Plan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
Poland had... "friendly" Soviets "supporting" their country for almost 44 years...
The EU gets huge benefits for that investment, the CEO of GM gets a multi-milion dollar pay packet.
Next time, please check how many Poles left Poland for western EU since they joined.
It's unfortunate that 0th order thinking jumps to this framing, it's one reason I always laugh when people talk about SpaceX taking 'government handouts' without these folks realizing the 100x ROI the government got out of their investment. All investments are 'hand outs' but not all 'hand outs' are investments.
Clear thinking at a large enough scale will prevent a populace from self destructing due to stupidity about this topic.
Think of it as defense spending
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_material_losses_during_...
And don’t forget the Partitions and The Deluge, too.
Crazy how people just like to pretend that wealth acquired before 1950 somehow just appeared there naturally.
Later I bought even nicer motors, meant to provide exceptional control and feedback for tactile/haptic behaviours, and they were from Poland too.
Then I got to work on a robotic arm which contained a bunch of components from Poland. At this point it was clear to me that it wasn’t coincidence.
Finally, I built a drone with my kids and again, the motors are Polish. And they’re excellent.
They went from being a place I would only expect to encounter cultural food items from to a place that entered a high tech supply chain which seems to produce high enough quality components that I see them without seeking them out.
As a Canadian it made me very envious. We should be able to do this. I’ve seen a handful of Canadian motors in my life, and they were all blower motors a long time ago. Our ability to build cutting edge technology seems to be so limited as to be virtually irrelevant in most cases.
All the polish I know that work in IT enjoy handwork as well. They are hard workers.
[0] https://lubimyczytac.pl/ksiazka/5124728/czesc-pracy-o-kultur...
The Soviets really valued STEM. They also quite valued emancipating women.
Just for context, in the 60s, around 5% of chemistry PhDs in the US were women. In the Soviet Union, it was 40%! [0]
Of course, that doesn't excuse all the other things they did, but the amount of badass female engineers from Eastern Europe I had the honor of working with is a direct result of the pipeline the Soviets built.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-russia-had-...
In addition to the points of sibling comments, their respective starting posititions were drastically different: West Germany got the marshal plan, which benefitted their economy, the East had to pay reparations to the USSR, which meant whole factories, trains, even railroad tracks, all in all amounting to about a third of industrial capacity, were transferred to the USSR.
And the transformation to market economy involved at least two periods of suicidal decisions in name of ideology that regressed the economy (by the same person, even)
Anyway the trick to explosive growth as a country is who you trade with and how you count things. We now sell things to Germany instead of USSR, of course there’s “growth.” There’s also some very real growth, quite a bit of it - but I wouldn’t put one bit of care in a “top 20 biggest economies” ranking. NL is one of the biggest food exporters in the world because it sells mediocre tomatoes to Germany instead of selling rice to Brazil and food exports are counted in euros, not calories.
Most than century after Poland gained independence age WW1, you can still see the economical differences from being occupied by Germans and Russians.
It boggles the mind that people can look at a country whose average inhabitant meets the objective criteria for being developmentally challenged and wonder why it is an economic basket case.
This is a pretty simple and obvious observation. Have you ever been asked to take a proctored IQ test to help establish the "average IQ" of your own country? Presumably not. So why do people keep getting took by this silly idea that "average IQ per country" is a thing?
What you do see are attempts to synthesize IQ from aggregate economic and educational attainment data. But obviously these are really just proxies for economic development, which then begs the question.
But also you start to notice that definitely a lot of people who left Poland are coming back, and with that skills and new economic opportunities.
The same has been happening in Slovakia; GDP growth per annum very comparable to Poland since 1995.
As a typical example my very German car has many components with "made in <Poland/Slovakia/Hungary>" on the side.
Why was other comment flagged and dead???
What the US and most other western countries do are: Let infrastructure rot, defund education, reroute money to large corporations. This is how you end up with failed state.
I’ve never seen it, I travel a lot.
There is a while set of jobs in Pharma that got moved to Warsaw and no longer available in NL/DE.
But Poland did well capturing them and then growing new businesses locally, so now there's local brands and such that are expanding abroad on their own.
after Brexit - noticed polish engineers didn't want to be in the UK
I'd travelled to Warsaw a few times maybe 20 or so years ago, and you could feel the vibrancy and energy in the air.
The comedian Omid Djalili (a Brit of Iranian descent) had a number of "Polish plumber" skits:
British tradespeople in my experience are duplicitous, lazy, unmotivated, low quality, cocky and expensive.
I think the bigger factor is that Polish immigration has effectively ended. We're seeing more Poles returning from abroad than leaving. With the prosperity and stability of Poland, coupled by living in your home culture, immigration is simply not that attractive.
(Traditionally, much of Polish immigration was meant to be temporary. A good number of Poles stayed abroad and assimilated, because immigration tends to be "sticky".)
By the looks of it, Conservative party will never recover from this betrayal and soon followed by Labour who decided to maintain the status quo.
As a founder, it's a different story though - London is hard to beat from an entrepreneurship and capital access standpoint aside from parts of the CEE with strong ties to to American VC due to diaspora ties.
Edit: can't reply
> dzonga
Completely agree. I've O-1'ed plenty of European and British founders. But London is better than the rest of Europe from a raising perspective, which shows how bad the situation is in the rest of the continent.
[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...
[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy
[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/romania
Edit: can't reply
> Having 10-20% tax rate really helps though to have comparable or better pay rate to western europe with about 50% tax rate
At the employer end, if we offer enough FDI Western European governments do try to match support and subsidies that we could get in CEE.
Additionally, when investing in USD and used to American prices, it's a rounding error.
The drive to the CEE was partially government driven, but is now entirely due to the domestic ecosystem - you aren't going to find talent with the right attitude (business minded and independent) in Western Europe anymore.
having had my run around with London VCs - poor terms, slow moving (btw this is at seed stage) - it's better to bootstrap unless you're in deep tech (which London VCs can help out)
bootstrap and either deal with US VCs once you have numbers to back you up - if you wanna redo & do the VC route.
Sorry, but this is wrong. Cheaper labor is pretty much the only reason for nearshoring from more expensive European countries to places like Spain or Eastern Europe.
A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech or Romanian SWE wants to build the next JetBrains or UIPath.
I don't want to hire the former - they're useless and a headache. I want to hire the latter.
It might help to discuss actual ranges instead of "intimate experience" so we can tell if your experience matches reality.
Founder visas are generally suffering from a chicken-and-egg problem, where only a successful company can sponsor anyone
It's easier to raise rounds with better terms in London versus mainland Europe, aside from CEE where diaspora VCs in the US tend to step in to build the ecosystem.
But even then the entire ecosystem pales in comparison to the US.
1. Hard working people
2. Biggest recipient of EU subsidies used for projects which generates more profit. Infrastructure, internet, etc. To compare, Czechia used it for stupid things like bicycle lanes, child playgrounds etc.
3. Building permit is very easy to get for basically anything. Yes, this way you can sometimes get chaotic new buildings, but this can be solved later. In comparison, in Czechia, obtaining a building permit is difficult and depends on the whim of the official. Also we have basically non-existent property taxes, so new homes are unaffordable for everybody and only used as an investment.
4. Not allowing imigration from countries where people don't want to work and with hugely different religions and customs. This worked for Czechia too though, our biggest immigrants are Ukranians which are also slavs and very hard working. Official statistics is, that they paid in taxes more than they got from social support.
Without the full picture, these don’t seem like stupid things at all. What makes it stupid for them to invest in these things?
It’s hard to believe those type of people actually wanted to replace it with non European immigration, though (which is what happened). Of course cause and effect is a complex concept to wrap ones head around..
The right to vote on fundamental societal issues should come with some sort of mental means testing. I'm only half-kidding. I think.
Shocking.
Well done, UK. You really shat the bed and, by the look of it, still are. Diarrhea, possibly.
I definitely blame my difficulties with respiratory illnesses on living there as a kid...
They have all the fundamental human-capital strengths of economies like Germany. It's really no surprise they're doing so well.
Sensible smart people working hard will get a lot done over time.
For what it's worth Poland is the only place I've ever visited where felt I could easily see myself living there. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of Poles are moving back.
1. Lack of oligarchy - which in fact was not obvious outcome and little bit of luck on our part and little bit of cultural zeitgeist of 90ties and 00ths. 2. No east-west dithering - PL knew right away to which economic and cultural sphere wanted to belong
I wonder how much the Catholic vs. Orthodox background affected things there
A lot of people either forget, or never learned, that Poland was once one of the largest and most influential states in Europe.Yes it was long time ago, but the potential was always there. The real challenge was surviving the consequences of being caught between neighbors whose ideologies gave rise to two of the deadliest systems of the 20th century.
The EU is based on greedy West European corporations maximizing shareholder value at the expense of their own populations.
The EU is too big and should be reduced to the Western core countries. I wonder how Poland would fare then.
Also I am of not very popular anymore opinions that not distorted trade help both sides of the trade and immigrants really help economy of country that they immigrate into. Including workers.
I don't think quantum computing currently is able to help in the AI industry, I don't think this is having any impact.
WIG20 is essentially 5 banks, 3 energy providers, clothing, small shops + Allegro + CD Projekt Red. I don't think any of this has major world impact.
However had, it also is still a net EU subsidized country:
https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
In fact, Poland gets the most money. So, before we can evaluate the net worth, this number would have to be deducted, which would instantly make Poland drop more than 5 ranks in that chart if you look at it. Just compare the numbers for yourself, the calculation is trivial to do.
Here is total GDP per country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
(You have to compare the same year of course; my calculation above is for the year 2024. Poland is now ranked higher than in 2024, but the net subsidies still are given in. Those "Poland is now rich" never take that into account.)
- it was kind of inevitable once Poland stopped being oppressed by its neighbors. The USSR, Nazi Germany, the German Empire / Prussia, Austria, Imperial Russia, etc. have basically been dividing the country since the 1780s. Without these restrictions, Poland is a natural leader in its region purely on population alone.
- A general lack of ideological “mind viruses” that seem to plague the western world. Most Poles are pretty straightforward, common sense people. They might have opinions you don’t agree with but it’s not a country of extremists in any direction.
- the general openness to American culture and (over)work ethics. I think Poland probably looks more to America than it does any EU country, although this of course isn’t simple, especially lately. But in general it’s a pretty hardworking, business-open culture. My impression is that it’s much easier to operate a business here than say, Germany, Italy, or France.
- Something I need to read more about, but IIRC Poland dealt with its oligarch problems in a different way than Russia or Ukraine did post-USSR and so doesn’t really have this issue.
I want to stray from the politics too much, but we definitely self-sabotage in canada. It's kind of an immature teenage angst to self-loathe to the point of punishing yourself all the time.
The mind virus actually makes you love the host.
Uhh, the Law and Justice party was packing the Polish Constitutional Court, filling the government with party loyalists, and placing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly only a few years ago. I suppose veering close to a constitutional crisis isn’t ideological per se, but that framing doesn’t seem quite right
I wouldn’t describe PiS and its supporters as a dynamic cultural movement in the way MAGA is.
I want "kultura zapierdolu" t-shirt now.
Yeah when Poland banned abortion and declared a number of "LGBT free zones" a lot of Poles I know came here to Czech Republic
You have no clue what you are talking about. I wonder why this sort of obnoxious reasoning always comes from Poles and never from Czech people for example.
I bet a lot of people here criticizing that EU funding went to Poland are typically Right Leaning, and think they are making a some killer point about socialism, when back home they are also taking in the hand out money.
If you have a lot of farmland in a red state and the profits are reported in a blue state, then counting the reported profits on the corporate balance sheet will give a distorted picture of what is happening.
Look at e.g. General Mills, based in a blue state, but a great deal of what they buy are ag inputs from red states.
For example, for the US to have a chance in the EU, it would first need to fix its YOLO fiscal policy of sustained 5.5% debt/gdp deficits.
We shall see in a few years as US's debt balloons and the average American becomes pseudo-slaves from a few overlords... to see if the EU is really bad as some Americans believe it to be.
I think they're doing everything right and for their people
Have yet to visit. but even by just 2018 or 2019 I only would have jokes and a confused face if someone was telling me they had chosen a job or life in Warsaw as opposed to a bustling city in a Western European country. Now, I think I get it. Modern and cosmopolitan veneer, safety, opportunity, educated population, nationalist pride that isn't delusional, a sensical immigration policy being enforced before enforcing it becomes a human rights problem. I like it.
- Access to the EU market
- Cheap labour
- 250 billion in EU subsidies
PS. Ever since the full scale war started I finally learned Cyrillic, and I must say - there is something nice about this alphabet (if you speak a Slavic language, of course). Sadly we don't have an official Cyrillic version of Polish, though, my compatriots would have their brains explode if someone promoted one.
But yes, transliterated Russian doesn’t look quite right- rather cumbersome- and I assume the same would hold true for a Polish Cyrillic.
