Context – Jarosław Kaczyński’s comments sparked a political communication outburst and also pointed to a real-life problem that PiS has pledged to solve, but has failed to tackle despite being in power since 2015 and allocating a lot of money to designated programmes.
“Demographic panic”, fear of declining populations, has been on the minds of Central European leaders for quite some time.

Firstly, just after EU accession, decision-makers in Central Europe feared brain drain and large-scale migration to more affluent Western European countries. More recently, since Central Europe entered the phase of demographic development characterised by low fertility rates and longer life expectancy, declining birthrates seem to be one of the main concerns of (mainly conservative) Central European politicians.
Paweł Marczewski
Marcin Król Fellow
Marcin Król Fellow. Paweł Marczewski is head of the research unit Citizens at the ideaForum, think tank of the Batory Foundation, a member of the Carnegie Civic Research Network, and an affiliated researcher at the SWPS Youth Study Center. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Warsaw. His main areas of interest are relations between demographic changes and democracy, social movements, civil society organizations, and social justice. He is a contributing writer at the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny and a member of the editorial board of Przegląd Polityczny quarterly, his comments and articles appeared also in the Nation, Public Seminar, Eurozine, as well as major Polish dailies Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita. In the years 2011-2017, he was an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Warsaw, in 2015-2017 also head of publications at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
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