Facing pressure from nationalist political rivals, the ruling governments of Poland and Hungary are moving to restrict foreign labor — a decision economists warn could seriously damage both countries’ economic futures.
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar, who won his election by a wide margin in April, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has held power since 2023, have both faced criticism from nationalist opponents who accused them of being too lenient on immigration. Both leaders are now taking steps to counter that image.
Tusk’s administration cut work permits for non-EU citizens by 22% last year. Hungary’s new government went further in June, halting the issuance of worker visas for people from the Philippines, Georgia, and Armenia, describing it as an opening move in a broader effort to regulate guest workers.
Public surveys suggest strong support for these restrictions. In Poland, roughly two-thirds of respondents in an IBRiS poll conducted for the Wirtualna Polska news site in January said the country should accept fewer migrants from outside the European Union. In Hungary, a recent analysis by the Republikon Institute found that nearly half of Hungarians would bar migrants from poorer countries entirely, with another 40% saying only a limited number should be allowed in.
Economists and business leaders, however, paint a very different picture of what these countries actually need.
“Fewer workers mean slower growth and less tax coming in, while an older population costs more in pensions and health,” said Marcin Tomaszewski, lead economist for the EU region at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He noted that Poland and Hungary face steeper demographic challenges than their Western European counterparts. “Both are ageing before they are rich, and both only recently became places people move to rather than leave,” he added.
A 2024 forecast by the Polish Economic Institute projected that Poland — whose workforce already includes more than one million foreign workers, roughly two-thirds of them Ukrainian — could see 2.1 million fewer workers by 2035. Declines in the industrial sector alone could shave 6% to 8% off the country’s gross domestic product. A separate 2026 report by Deloitte, Ipsos, and the Institute of Public Affairs found that non-EU workers contributed as much as 10.7% of Poland’s economic output last year, even as birth rates hit their lowest point since World War Two.
Polish officials say the situation requires careful navigation. “If we changed our status from typical emigration country to migration one, we have to also adjust our whole system of functioning of the society,” said Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk, who added that Poland does not want its economy built primarily on cheap labor. In June, the ministry reported issuing eight times fewer work visas in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period in 2022, though that figure was partly influenced by changes in rules affecting Ukrainian workers.
In Hungary, Magyar found himself at the center of a public dispute with a domestic poultry company called Master Good, which warned it might scale back a factory expansion because of the new immigration policies. Magyar accused the company — which had received government support — of attempting to “threaten the government and the Hungarian people,” and suggested it could hire local workers if it raised wages. But company owner Laszlo Barany pushed back, saying his 580 Filipino employees were critical to operations given Hungary’s aging population. “People get old, they retire and there is no demographic supply, while those entering the workforce are not looking for this type of job,” Barany said.
In Poland, businesses are struggling with a bureaucratic backlog. Work permits are taking more than six months to process, and applications for residence permits can take nearly a year, according to Nadia Winiarska, deputy director of the labor department at the Polish business federation Lewiatan. While the deputy interior minister said the visa system is being updated, employers worry that skilled workers are already leaving for other countries.
Rahul Jha, a 35-year-old restaurant owner, described losing a chef from his South Indian restaurant after the employee grew frustrated waiting more than a year for a temporary residence permit. “Denmark gave him a five-year visa … like immediately, a skilled visa. So he just moved out from here,” Jha said.
