When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Poland in early 2020, the amount of public help the then-government provided reached 10% of the country’s GDP.

Today, as the biggest flood since 1997 turned several Polish towns to rubble, the still relatively new government of Donald Tusk is facing a similar, even if smaller, challenge: rolling out unconditional help to support clean-up and reconstruction. If it fails, it will face unfavourable comparisons with the previous administration less than a year ahead of a key presidential election that will decide its future.

The damage

The extent of the damage the flooding has inflicted mostly in south-western Polands is not yet clear. The flood wave continues to move downstream and risks still exist that it could overflow or damage levees, multiplying the losses.

So far, only some affected regions have presented their loss estimates, with the southwestern Wroclaw region, which bore the brunt of the cataclysm, reporting PLN3.8bn (€890mn) worth of damage alone. Smaller losses will also occur in the Katowice, Opole, Gorzow, and Szczecin regions – all located along the Oder, Poland’s second biggest river, and its tributaries, which was swollen by the extreme rainfall.

These estimates are nearly certain to skyrocket. Poland’s Ministry of Finance has estimated that budget amendments that the government will need to make to address the damage will run into “tens of billions of zloty”.

The government has said time and again no one will be left without help and the reconstruction effort will allow the currently ruined towns and villages to be rebuilt in better state and with better infrastructure than before the flood.

Analysts say that the eventual amount of extra money that the government will have to generate – for example via issuing debt – to address the flood damage will be a relatively modest PLN3bn - PLN6bn. The overall amount of money that the government has now offered is much higher – up to PLN23bn, including help from the EU, Tusk said on September 24.

“This would significantly increase the likelihood of a scenario in which flood damage leads to dynamic reconstruction that offsets the negative economic effects of the damage itself,” mBank analysts wrote on September 24.

“It is very important for us to provide financing for aid and then reconstruction for the coming months and years, because some projects will last for many years,” Tusk said on September 24, as he opened the weekly government’s meeting in Warsaw.

The politics

The Tusk government also knows the flood is its make or break moment.

The political implications for the government are that the flooding might jeopardise Tusk’s plan to field a successful candidate in next year’s presidential election, if the initial dynamic response of the first days during and immediately after flood fizzles out  because of tight finances and poor organisation.

“We believe that this time the assistance provided to entities and people affected by the flood will be rather generous (I hope it will also be quick) – in the first year of office and the first such a serious attempt, the government cannot afford any mistakes,” mBank wrote in its analysis.

An anonymous government official told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper on September 24: “This issue is the key to the presidential elections. A good recovery is the lifeline for the coalition candidates' campaign. I'm mainly thinking of the politician that Platforma [Civic Platform] will put forward, as he will realistically face off against PiS. But we know how it goes with crises like this. Failures can be a campaign nail in the coffin, and there's still a lot ahead of us.”

Poland’s political divisions run so deep that the government was not given any breathing room even as water overwhelmed levees and broke a major dam, which led to near-complete inundation of Stronie Slaskie, where thousands lost their livelihoods in matter of hours.

Sensing a strong campaign topic, PiS unleashed a storm on social media, with Tusk’s now-infamous quote that “the forecasts aren’t overly dramatic” leading the charge – even if the quote was taken out of context, as the PM did offer a less carefree assessment of then-looming danger.

“During the PiS government, crisis teams were responsible for coordinating the work of services and rescuing people. Tusk's crisis teams have only one task – rescuing his image,” Mariusz Blaszczak, the head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus, wrote on social media.

PiS has also tried a classic manoeuvre by submitting a legislative package dubbed “To the rescue”,  only to launch another broadside against the Tusk government once the ruling majority inevitably rejected it.

The future

Other than reconstruction, the Tusk administration will also face the issue of preventing floods in the future.

While this year’s flood was nowhere near 1997 in terms of the extent of the damage because of the efforts by the state to build polders and levees, as well as thanks to the overall better ability to respond simply because Poland is wealthier now than it was then.

Still, the Tusk government will need to step up efforts to be prepared better for the next big flood, which, say climate scientists, is bound to happen sooner rather than later. 

The September floods in Poland and elsewhere in Central Europe were due to climate change boosting evaporation in the Mediterranean Sea to create a wet mass of air that happened to travel up north where the extra moisture was released. There is no reason to think this would be an isolated incident in a warming world (and Europe, for that matter, is warming faster than other continents).

Tusk’s problem is going to be, however, that effective tackling of the next flood could be rather unglamorous or unpopular, or both.

Experts say that new, ever-bigger, polders are spectacular but they should be the last line of defence only after unassuming efforts that will not offer opportunities for ribbon-cutting on live TV. 

One such solution is to curb logging in the mountains so as to create a natural barrier slowing down water run-off. Another idea is to let rivers flow more freely where possible so that their valleys can simply take on floodwaters where they will eventually dry up or sink in the ground, rebuilding underground aquifers.

The unpopular solutions include a ban on new buildings in areas that get flooded and getting through to people with a message that some of the damage would not have occurred had they taken relatively cheap precautions such as buying mobile walls to protect houses and businesses.