Poland

Poland's economy is the European Union's growth outperformer: GDP has roughly tripled since EU accession in 2004, driven by manufacturing integration with German supply chains, EU structural funds, and a large domestic consumer market. The Law and Justice party's (PiS) judicial reforms from 2015 to 2023 — replacing Supreme Court judges, creating a disciplinary chamber, and subordinating the judiciary to parliamentary appointment — triggered EU rule-of-law proceedings and frozen recovery fund payments. The 2023 election of the Civic Platform-led coalition represented a democratic correction, but reversing judicial capture has proved legally complex because the PiS-appointed judges claim constitutional tenure. Poland's governance oscillation between liberal-democratic and illiberal-democratic poles reflects a deeper structural tension: a society that overwhelmingly supports EU membership (over 80%) while periodically electing governments that challenge EU institutional norms. The biological parallel is an immune system in conflict — the organism's defence mechanisms (judiciary, media, civil society) alternately fight infection and attack healthy tissue depending on which political faction controls the regulatory apparatus.