Poland loses billions of dollars through LGBT discrimination, warns US embassy chief

The most senior US diplomat in Poland has warned that the country is losing billions of dollars a year due to discrimination against LGBT people. His remarks have prompted an angry response from right-wing figures, in a county where the conservative government has led a concerted anti-LGBT campaign.

In a tweet this morning, US chargé d’affaires Bix Aliu – who has been acting head of the embassy since the departure in January of ambassador Georgette Mosbacher, a Trump appointee – drew attention to a recent report on the costs of anti-LGBT discrimination in Central and Eastern Europe.

“According to the Open For Business report, the lack of inclusiveness for LGBTQI+ communities costs Poland, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine over $8.6 billion a year,” wrote Aliu in Polish. “Protecting LGBTQI+ human rights also means greater prosperity for all.”

Open For Business is a coalition of 36 global companies – including Facebook, American Express, Tesco, Ikea and Microsoft – that seeks to promote LGBT+ inclusion. It argues that “open, inclusive and diverse societies are better for business and better for economic growth”.

Earlier this year, Open For Business published a report, funded by Google, entitled The Economic Case for LGBT+ Inclusion in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It used Poland, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine as case studies.

The authors calculated the economic losses caused by discrimination against LGBT people by conducting interviews with business leaders and human resources executives, as well by analysing business-related data and publications on economic and LGBT issues in the region.

They found that CEE countries are “losing foreign investment opportunities due to perceived LGBT+ discrimination” and that “skilled workers are leaving to work in more open societies”. Meanwhile, “overt LGBT+ discrimination promulgated by political leaders in Hungary and Poland harms [their] national reputation”.

The total cost to the four countries of these losses was calculated at $8.6 billion annually. For Poland, the figure was estimated as between 4.6 billion and 9.5 billion zloty ($1.2-2.6 billion).

By contrast, “LGBT+ friendly companies outperform their rivals” because “economies and companies that embrace diversity and inclusion have improved financial outcomes”. The report notes that a 10% improvement in LGBT rights is associated with a $3,700 per capita GDP increase.

Recent years have seen a campaign by Poland’s ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and Catholic church against what they refer to as “LGBT ideology”. This is presented as a dangerous western import that threatens to undermine Polish culture, values and even the nation itself.

After IKEA fired an employee in Poland for making homophobic remarks, including quoting biblical passages suggesting that gay people deserve to be killed, the justice minister called the decision “scandalous” and “unacceptable”.

He announced that he would order prosecutors to investigate, saying that “this is a case of legal and economic violence against those who do not want to share the values of pro-LGBT activists”. In a separate case, he also supported a print-shop worker who refused to produce material for an LGBT client.

Norway, which provides hundreds of millions of euros in grants to Poland, has pledged to end funding to the many Polish local authorities, usually under PiS control, that have adopted resolutions declaring themselves free from “LGBT ideology”.

Aliu’s tweet this morning elicited an angry response from politicians and commentators on the Polish right. “American diplomat in service of ideology,” headlined wPolityce, a media outlet linked to PiS.

Krzysztof Sobolewski, the head of PiS’s executive committee, noted that US allies Saudi Arabia and UAE are not known for their tolerance towards LGBT people. Paweł Rybicki, a former aide to PiS prime minister Beata Szydło, suggested maybe Aliu should calculate how much CEE countries lose from tax avoidance by US firms.

Robert Winnicki, an MP and one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party, declared that “the US is weakening because it chose ideology over pragmatics”.

Maciej Świrski, head of the Polish Anti-Defamation League and chair of the Polish Press Agency’s supervisory board, accused Aliu of “molesting us with these letters [LBGT]”. He suggested the diplomat should instead focus on the threat of Russia.

Mariusz Stankiewicz, a journalist, disputed the Open For Business report’s findings. “It has long been known that the best guarantor of social and economic development is the traditional family”, which “spends money, accumulates capital and provides security for young citizens”, he argued.

However, some welcomed the Aliu’s, including Wojciech Karpieszuk, a journalist for Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading liberal daily: “The US Embassy has been doing a very good job lately, for which I am very grateful…I hope that this pressure will mean that no politician in Poland will ever again build their campaign on homophobic hate speech.”

Main image credit: Jakub Porzycki / Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.