Poland Unpacked week 37 (31 August - 6 September 2026)

The US has long treated it as business as usual. In Poland, it is still a novelty. Helpfind, a claims-management firm from Ostrów Wielkopolski founded in 2018, helps clients pursue claims against banks. It has become Poland’s no. 1 player, handling tens of thousands of cases involving the free-credit sanction, while also emerging as the banking sector’s no. 1 enemy – thanks in part to its offer to handle cases with no upfront fee, with the firm paid a commission only if the case is won. It was also the first company in Poland to introduce litigation finance. Banks are watching the company closely. No surprise: Helpfind is analyzing another 20 products for potential violations.

Poland is also catching up with the West in generating energy from offshore wind farms. The first one began operating in July this year, when electricity from Baltic Power, developed by Poland’s Orlen and Canada’s Northland Power, flowed into the national grid for the first time. Poland’s Polenergia and Norway’s Equinor have just completed work on the foundations for 100 wind-turbine monopiles. They were installed by the crew of Thialf, one of the world’s largest installation vessels. At the end of August, Poland’s PGE and Denmark’s Orsted completed the installation of monopiles. Ocean Winds, owned by Portugal’s EDP Renewables and France’s Engie, is developing the BC-Wind project in the Baltic Sea.

Meanwhile, Poland’s LPP is set to compete aggressively with Allegro and Amazon. The country’s largest fashion group, which reported PLN 23 billion (EUR 5.4 billion) in revenue in 2025, has launched a marketplace under the banner of one of its brands, Sinsay. By next year, it wants the platform to offer 100,000 products from global players and local entrepreneurs.

Polish cosmetics, meanwhile, are holding their own against global leaders. Around the world, they are being compared with Korean cosmetics. About 1,000 companies operate in Poland’s cosmetics industry, making it a highly competitive market. Ministerstwo Dobrego Mydła [Ministry of Good Soap], which has been active in the sector since 2014, has announced investments in production and sales, including its online store, and plans to break even.

The most important piece of economic data out of Poland last week was the preliminary inflation estimate. In August, inflation rose to 3.4% year on year, from 3% in July. The main reason was higher fuel prices, driven by elevated global oil prices. Inflation would have been higher still were it not for falling food prices, which declined by 0.9% year on year.

Inflation could edge higher over the coming months if the conflict in the Middle East continues. A rise above 4% year on year cannot be ruled out.

The elephant in the room for the Polish economy is the large general-government deficit. For the third consecutive year, it is set to exceed 7% of GDP – an unprecedented run in Poland’s recent economic-policy history. We discussed the issue in last week’s newsletter.

We took a closer look at what lies behind such a large deficit, examining both the economic and political factors. In short, spending has risen substantially without a corresponding increase in revenue. Contrary to a widely held view, defense is not the dominant source of the additional expenditure.

On the one hand, expansionary fiscal policy is helping to sustain strong economic activity. This is evident in the preliminary GDP estimate: the economy grew by 3.9% year on year in the second quarter. The same momentum can be seen in July’s retail-sales and industrial-production data. On the other hand, the deficit is far larger than the economy’s growth rate, pushing up the debt-to-GDP ratio. Poland’s debt burden is still not particularly high: it has exceeded 60% of GDP, compared with 82.9% across the EU. But over the longer term, fiscal policy based on deficits of this magnitude is unsustainable. The government formed after the 2027 election will have to confront the problem. Poland will probably face tax increases, spending cuts or some combination of the two.

With the start of September, it was not only pupils who went back to school. After the summer recess, members of parliament also returned to the Sejm benches.

There is no shortage of new legislative proposals after the holidays. Among the issues debated last week were changes to electoral law, which were approved by the Sejm. That may not sound especially gripping, but bear with us: the changes could matter considerably in the context of next year’s parliamentary election.

Demographic shifts within Poland mean that a vote cast, say, in Warsaw carries less weight in electing MPs than one cast in Elbląg in the north-east of the country. The law has failed to keep pace with these changes. Why does this seemingly technical adjustment matter politically as well? We explain in our analysis.

Another subject has meanwhile entered Poland’s daily political fray: the collapse of the Zondacrypto cryptocurrency exchange. The head of the Polish Olympic Committee has been detained, while Przemysław Kral, the exchange’s CEO and the central figure in the affair, has agreed to testify in return for being granted the status of a “small crown witness” - a cooperating suspect entitled to a more lenient sentence.

Radosław Piesiewicz, president of the Polish Olympic Committee, is a political protégé of Jacek Sasin, a prominent politician from Law and Justice (PiS). Kral, for his part, helped finance, among other things, the Polish edition of CPAC, the traveling conference circuit associated with the MAGA movement. Advertising for the exchange was also particularly prominent on Telewizja Republika, the television channel that strongly supports Poland’s right.

The right is fighting back, pointing out that Kral is now represented by Roman Giertych, an MP from the Civic Coalition (KO), best known in recent years for running a network of online trolls supporting the government on social media. An online battle is now under way over who gets to frame the scandal - and who can turn it to their political advantage. So far, nobody has been particularly successful.

Toward the end of the week, MPs elected a new judge to the Constitutional Tribunal. The post went to Maciej Berek, until recently a minister in Donald Tusk’s government and - hardly a secret - a close, long-standing associate of the prime minister. Berek’s candidacy was criticized even by members of the governing coalition as an attempt by the current government to politicize the Constitutional Tribunal. Readers may remember him from one of our previous pieces.

Berek’s defenders argued that his strong qualifications and extensive legal experience would improve the quality of the Tribunal’s work. But his professional credentials were never really in dispute. It is his political ties to Prime Minister Tusk that were - and remain - the focus of criticism.

Berek was elected with the votes of most members of the governing coalition. In theory, he should soon be sworn in by President Karol Nawrocki. There are, however, strong indications that Mr. Nawrocki will refuse to do so, further complicating an already tense dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal.

Several noteworthy deals involving technology companies were announced last week. We followed them as they unfolded.

Liteon has decided to invest around USD 176m, or approximately PLN 653m (EUR 152m), in Warsaw-based DCX Liquid Cooling Systems. The deal will give the Taiwanese group a stake of around 25% in the Polish company.

The aim is to combine DCX’s liquid-cooling technology with Liteon’s power solutions for AI infrastructure. This could lead to jointly developed systems for high-density data centers, while also helping the Polish company scale up production and sales.

The investment comes as demand for more efficient cooling systems for artificial-intelligence infrastructure is growing rapidly. More powerful servers consume more electricity and generate more heat, meaning traditional air cooling is increasingly giving way to liquid-based solutions.

Callstack, a Polish software house specializing in React Native – a technology used to develop mobile applications – and cross-platform solutions, has made a significant business move. The company announced the acquisition of Vienna-based Margelo, the developer of popular tools for the React Native ecosystem.

Callstack itself was recently acquired by a large American investment fund and is now pursuing the strategy outlined by its chief executive and co-founder, Mike Grabowski.

The value of the latest transaction exceeds EUR 20m, or around PLN 86m. The combination is expected to allow the two companies to broaden their technology offering and serve clients jointly. The acquisition of Margelo forms part of Callstack’s strategy to strengthen its technological capabilities, while also paving the way for further development of open-source projects and international expansion.

Science4Beauty, a young Polish company, uses in its cosmetics an ingredient identical to a toxin found in the venom of predatory sea snails. It has anti-wrinkle properties and may prolong the effects of botulinum toxin.

As the company’s representatives explain, one of the toxins found in the venom of marine snails from the Conus genus is registered as a powerful painkiller, hundreds of times stronger than morphine. That provided the starting point for their work. Drawing on their scientific expertise and genetic engineering, they recreated the toxin in a laboratory using biotechnology.

They have already used the conotoxin to develop several cosmetic products. The company has also found its first customers for the new products, mainly among aesthetic-medicine clinics.

The idea has persuaded investors as well. Science4Beauty has raised funding that it plans to use primarily to scale up sales, expand distribution and continue product development.

A concept has emerged in Poland that, while seemingly simple, could change the established logic of cooperation between science and business. Put simply, rather than waiting for universities to produce finished inventions, large companies would initiate research earlier into solutions that may become important to them in the future. Bringing the two worlds together and turning the idea into practice, however, is far from straightforward.

The consortium working on the concept has won one of the competitions under the Horizon Europe program. The project, Empowering Universities and Industry Together to Scale a Challenge-Driven Model for Academic Spin-Off Creation, or EUIT for short, aims to build bridges between Europe’s largest corporations and researchers and deepen cooperation between them. The intended result is the more frequent creation of joint ventures between scientists and businesses – the so-called spin-offs.

The model was developed in Poland over two years as a bottom-up initiative called EU Innovate Together and gained recognition in Brussels. It has now been given an opportunity to expand and be implemented in other EU countries. The concept fits with the European Commission’s plan to significantly increase the number of spin-offs created on the back of scientific research.

Winobranie – literally the grape harvest, and in practice Zielona Góra’s annual wine festival – turns the city into Poland’s wine capital each September.

So, head west to Zielona Góra, where Winobranie turns the city into Poland’s wine capital from September 5th to 13th. The nine-day festival brings together 44 regional wineries in its Wine Town, alongside tastings, open wine cellars, vineyard trips by “WineBus”, concerts, a street market and the traditional parade. The symbolism is suitably Bacchanalian: the mayor ceremonially hands the keys to the city to Bacchus, who then presides over the festivities.

This is not merely a case of a Polish city borrowing a Mediterranean costume for the weekend. Wine has been made around Zielona Góra for centuries: the earliest documented reference to local vineyards dates to 1314, and by the 18th century the city had hundreds of wine houses. In 1826, local entrepreneurs also established what the city describes as the first sparkling-wine producer outside France. Today the region is at the heart of Poland’s small but increasingly confident wine industry.

September in Poland means one thing: mushroom season. As summer fades, Poles head into the woods armed with wicker baskets, small knives and an unnerving ability to distinguish lunch from a potentially fatal mistake. Porcini, chanterelles and other forest treasures are the prize; a respectable haul is a source of genuine satisfaction, if not outright bragging rights.

For many Poles, “going to the forest” at this time of year is therefore less a leisurely stroll than a foraging expedition. The autumn woods come with their own soundtrack: crunching leaves, birds overhead and families debating whether that suspicious-looking specimen is edible. Mushroom identification is taken seriously, for obvious reasons. Wanna feel one of those Polish vibes? Grab your basket and head for the woods. And remember that the shortest route from forest to frying pan requires both enthusiasm and expertise.