According to the Polish Economic Institute (PIE) the Warsaw region is one of the ten richest regions in the European Union. The Eurostat- the EU’s statistical office has recently analyzed data for 2020.

In the Warsaw region of the capital, GDP (in purchasing power parity) is one of the highest in the entire EU. The City of Warsaw, together with the surrounding poviats, has a GDP per capita of 167% of the average GDP per capita in the EU.

According to Eurostat calculations, the poorest voivodships in Poland include Podkarpackie and Lubelskie Regions with a rate 52%. In fact, Mazowieckie Voivodeship is the only Polish region in which the value of GDP per capita surpasses the EU average.

According to the Eurostat comparison by PIE, the 10 regions with the highest index value include mostly metropolitan areas (such as the Brussels-Capital Region, Prague or Hovedstaden in Denmark). This group also includes regions with strong urban centers (e.g. Upper Bavaria from Munich) or regions which benefit from their geographical location on trade routes – e.g. Hamburg.

The poorest areas of continental Europe are located in the south including primarily the regions of Bulgaria (4 of the five poorest regions of the EU are in this country), as well as Greece (Epirus, East Macedonia and Thrace) and Croatia (Pannonian Croatia).

In most of the richest regions, the GDP index increased in 2020 compared to 2019, despite the pandemic crisis. According to PIE analysts, this confirms earlier assumptions that large urban centers with the developed sector of advanced services will not lose as much from the pandemic as other areas.

“It also confirms the trend observed for years, in which the processes of intensive development are concentrated in metropolitan centers (due to e.g. clearly higher productivity or the concentration of innovative activity)”. In terms of the impact of the pandemic on Polish regions, the crisis year 2020 improved their GDP index – so they were doing, on average, better than other EU regions”, – PIE economists point out.

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