A constant reduction in jobs, austerity programs, and mine closures is the result of a crisis in Polish mining that has lasted for more than a quarter of a century. Poles can look back on a centuries-old mining tradition and now fear that mining could come to a standstill in the coming decades. The situation worsened with the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s. Some of the old mines were unprofitable and indebted, leading to a first major wave of mine closures in the early 1990s. Due to massive austerity programs, mergers of individual mines, and cuts in state mining subsidies, about half of the miners have lost their jobs in the last ten years. Rising labor costs, high domestic transport costs, and declining production volumes are similar causes in Poland today to those that led to the German coal crisis in the Ruhr region at the end of the 1950s and the associated mine closures.
Despite the ongoing decline of coal mining, Poland is currently the largest producer of hard coal in Europe, with 32 active mines. The country has no shortage of coal reserves. According to current estimates, the deposits are sufficient for more than 100 years. These large quantities make Poland relatively independent in its energy supply, and to this day, over 90 percent of its electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants.
The reserves are far from being exhausted, but the difficult location and great depth of the coal make extraction increasingly dangerous and expensive. Meanwhile, the country imports more coal than it exports, and the recently decided construction of the country's first nuclear power plant suggests that the current situation of the coal mines will not improve in the future.