Poland

French presence

French community: 5,731 on the consular register. A similar number are probably unregistered. Around 600,000 French visitors per year.
Embassy in Warsaw and Consulate-General in Kraków.

Visits

President Emmanuel Macron visited Warsaw and Kraków on 3 and 4 February 2020, accompanied by four Ministers (Jean-Yves Le Drian, Florence Parly, Élisabeth Borne and Bruno Le Maire). Three documents were signed during the visit: 1) A Franco-Polish political declaration on cooperation in European matters; 2) A new technical Cooperation Programme under the Strategic Partnership for the years 2020-2023; 3) A declaration of intent for enhanced cyber security cooperation. President Macron received Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Paris on 17 March and 24 November 2021 and the Polish President, Andrzej Duda, on 27 October the same year.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna made a first visit to Warsaw on 31 May 2022, on the way back from Kyiv, and met with her Polish counterpart. The two Ministers spoke several times by telephone in 2022.
Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade Olivier Becht visited Poland in December 2022.

Foreign Minister Colonna spoke with her new Polish counterpart, Radosław Sikorski, by telephone on 14 December 2023.

Ambassadors

French Ambassador to Poland: Étienne de Poncins (since September 2023)
Polish Ambassador to France: Jan Emeryk Rościszewski (since April 2022)

Cultural, scientific and technical cooperation

There is very considerable scientific and academic cooperation, with 76 dual degrees in place, the integrated action programme Polonium, and institutional relations forged between key French and Polish research bodies (agreements between the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Polish Academy of Sciences, many study grants). France is the fifth-largest destination for Polish students, both for enrolment in degree programmes and Erasmus+. There is a focus on trilateral cooperation (with Germany) and European cooperation. The University of Warsaw is host to the Franco-Polish Human and Social Sciences Research Centre, a research unit and centre for conferences and debate. A Franco-Polish scientific year was held from March to December 2019. Following the European Commission’s third call for proposals under the European Universities Initiative, 10 consortiums of European universities involve French and Polish partners.

Linguistic and educational cooperation seeks to maintain French as the country’s fourth most-taught foreign language: 12.6% of pupils learn French in high schools, but only 0.8% in primary schools since the generalization of a compulsory foreign language in the first three years at school, which in 99% of cases is English. In total, around 280,000 children are learning French. 27 schools have 36 bilingual sections in which a total of 3,675 pupils are taught. The French Lycée René Goscinny in Warsaw has 699 pupils, 25% of whom are Polish.
In addition to the Institut Français branches in Warsaw and Krakow, there are 9 Alliance Française branches in the regions (Bydgoszcz, Katowice, Łódź, Lublin, Gdańsk, Szczecin, Toruń and Wrocław). The ninth Alliance Française branch in Poland, in Rzeszów, was inaugurated in November 2023 by Ambassador de Poncins.

Poland has been an observer member of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) since 1997.

Active decentralized cooperation (175 twinning agreements and 350 cooperation projects identified at all levels of local government) is a precious source of influence.

Other cooperation

French armed forces personnel are seconded to take part in the training of Ukrainian service members in Poland, under the European EUMAM mission.