When the Communist regime collapsed in 1989, Poland’s economy was considered one of the most dire in Europe. Fast forward to 2026, and the country has the 20th largest economy in the world. So how did Poland become Europe’s new economic gem?

How strong is the Polish economy?
Poland’s economic output crossed the $1 trillion threshold for the first time in 2025, when its gross domestic product increased 3.6% year-on-year, according to data released by the country’s statistics agency earlier this month. That enabled it to leapfrog Switzerland and enter the world’s top 20 economies for the first time.

This is a far cry from the early to mid-1990s, when Poland “rationed sugar and flour, while its citizens were paid one-tenth of what West Germans earned”, said The Associated Press.

What’s behind its success?
One of the most important factors was “rapidly building a strong institutional framework for business”, economist Marcin Piatkowski of Poland’s Kozminski University told the AP. The creation of anti-monopoly agencies and regulatory bodies ensured that Poland’s economy “wasn’t hijacked by corrupt practices and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-Communist world”.

In more recent years, EU funding has “helped modernise Polish industry and expand an increasingly digitalised services sector”, said The Wall Street Journal. Above all, Polish business leaders “take opportunities when they see them”, Dominik Kopiński, a senior adviser at the Polish Economic Institute, told Deutsche Welle. “They are trailblazing for other companies, setting an example.”

Will it last?
As with much of the developed world, demographics are not in Poland’s favour: it has a low birth rate and an ageing society, said the AP. Wages are also “lower than the EU average” and, “while small and medium enterprises flourish, few have become global brands”.

The country “must also contend with rising public debt”, said The Wall Street Journal. Poland’s budget deficit of 6.8% is “significantly higher than the 3% benchmark for EU member states”. If Poland wants to continue climbing the economic ladder, its government will “need to rein in spending and raise taxes” over the coming years.

Public satisfaction with the NHS has increased for the first time since 2019. But although 26% of British adults questioned in the British Social Attitudes survey said they were satisfied with the health service – an increase of 6% from 2024 – there was still a majority, some 51%, who said they were dissatisfied. That “sounds more like a cause for concern than celebration”, said The Guardian’s editorial board.

‘Justified impatience’
“The public appears inclined to accept the government’s narrative of a broken system being painstakingly put back together” but hospital waiting lists are “still huge”, NHS dentistry has “probably never been in a weaker state” and there’s “justified impatience” on lagging social care provision, said The Guardian. So “having pronounced the NHS ‘broken’”, Wes Streeting and his Department of Health and Social Care colleagues must “hurry up with their repairs”.

Still, the survey results, published by The King’s Fund think tank, suggest the health service is “finally on the long road to recovery”, said The Mirror. This “gold standard assessment” finds that this Labour government’s first full year in power “saw the greatest fall in dissatisfaction” in the NHS since “New Labour’s first full year in power in 1998”.

Skills shortage
“Debate” about the NHS “typically focuses on funding, waiting lists and plans for reform”, said Chris Day, chair of the Russell Group, in The Times. But the system’s “most fundamental constraint” is that it “does not have enough skilled people”. There are more than 100,000 vacancies across the “health ecosystem”, and demand “is rising faster” than ever, due to “an ageing population, rising chronic illness and growing expectations”. The “real solution” is to increase “training capacity” and support a “range of alternative career paths into healthcare”.

The health service is “central” to Labour’s “tenuous hopes of political recovery”, said Chris Smyth in the Financial Times; if Labour can’t convince voters it’s “fixing the NHS”, it “will have little else to offer”. But if it can “demonstrate tangible improvement”, it will have a “powerful argument” against Reform’s Nigel Farage, who has “repeatedly questioned whether the NHS funding model can survive”.

Students in Patna, capital of the Indian state of Bihar, celebrate with traditional ladoo sweets after getting their Class 10 exam results, equivalent to GCSEs. Bihar is the first state to release the results of the nationwide exams, which finished earlier this month.

Santosh Kumar / Hindustan Times / Getty Images

Britain is a “dip-obsessed” nation, said The Guardian, and hummus is at the top of the list. The chickpea-based Middle Eastern dip first hit UK supermarket shelves in Waitrose in 1987 and has since become a “staple” of shopping baskets across the nation.

Social media has added fuel to the hummus craze in recent years, thanks to TikTok’s “obsession with #grazingboards and #girldinners” while, offline, bread and dips have become a “culinary calling card” at restaurants. In a sign of its “importance in the national diet”, said The Times, hummus was recently added to “that ultimate consumer accolade”: the Office for National Statistics’ virtual shopping basket of popular goods used to measure the cost of living in Britain.

With so many varieties to choose from, picking a pot of supermarket hummus can be a “minefield”, said Tomé Morrissy-Swan in The i Paper. Stand-out options include Waitrose’s No. 1 Extra Virgin Olive Oil Houmous, which has a “smooth, mousse-y” texture with a “strong but not bitter” tahini taste, and Sainsbury’s Organic Classic Houmous, which isn’t as smooth but has a “very strong, pleasing tahini flavour”. 

For those keen to avoid the “long list of unnecessary ingredients” sometimes found in store-bought tubs, it is fairly straightforward to make hummus at home, said Phoebe Cornish in the Daily Express. And if you’re looking to “forgo additives, preservatives, and added sugar”, Jamie Oliver’s 10-minute, five-ingredient recipe is a great place to start.

The US-Israeli war on humanity
Yara Hawari on Al Jazeera
“Brute force” is being used to impose a “might makes right” world order, writes Yara Hawari of the Palestinian Policy Network think tank. And Gaza is at “the epicentre”. Donald Trump clearly wants to expand his Board of Peace to replace the UN with “a structure answerable solely to Washington”, in a “global project” that has already spread to Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. “What started in Gaza is continuing elsewhere” as “the genocidal US-Israeli war machine” assaults “humanity itself”.

Alan Bennett has gone from national treasure to insufferable snob
Michael Henderson in The Telegraph
Alan Bennett “bats high in the order” of grumps who rail against the world, writes Michael Henderson. “He’s always been witty. Occasionally he’s wise.” But “a dispiriting sourness has crept into” his latest collection of diaries. “Cosy Alan now approves” of those who “declare ‘I can’t say I love my country because I don’t know what that means’”. He’s spent much of his 91 years “writing about a country he appears to distrust, and many of its people, who he clearly despises”.

Forget birdwatching, I’m into moth-watching: they’re fascinating and misunderstood insects
Helen Pilcher in The Guardian
“I’ve been hooked on moths” since childhood, writes Helen Pilcher. There are about 2,500 species, often distinguished only by “the curve of a forewing”. They pollinate plants and can have colours that “make Elton John’s stage outfits look tame”. They are also “endlessly surprising”, like the tiger moth that emits “ultrasonic clicks to jam their bat nemeses’ sonar”, and the death’s head hawkmoth that “mimics the scent of bees so it can raid honey from their hives”.