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POZNAN, Poland (AP) — A generation ago, Poland rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned. Today, the economy of the country has edged past Switzerland to become the world’s 20th largest with more than $1 trillion in annual output.
It’s a historic leap from the post-Communist ruins of 1989-90 to European growth champion, which economists say has lessons on how to bring prosperity to ordinary people — and that the Trump administration says should be recognized by Poland’s presence at a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies later this year.
The transformation is reflected in people like Joanna Kowalska, an engineer from Poznan, a city of around 500,000 people midway between Berlin and Warsaw. She returned home after five years in the U.S.
“I get asked often if I’m missing something by coming back to Poland, and, to be honest, I feel it’s the other way around,” Kowalska said. “We are ahead of the United States in so many areas.”
Kowalska works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing the first artificial intelligence factory in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, one of 10 on the continent financed by a European Union program.
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Kowalska worked for Microsoft in the U.S. after graduating from the Poznan University of Technology, in a job she saw as a “dream come true.”
Newer skyscrapers flank the communist-era Palace of Culture and Science, foreground, in n, Poland, May 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File) Newer skyscrapers flank the communist-era Palace of Culture and Science, foreground, in n, Poland, May 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File) Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share Share Facebook
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