Poles
Polish people are the sixth largest national group in the European Union. Estimates vary depending on source, though available data suggest a total number of around 60 million people worldwide (with roughly 21 million living outside of Poland, many of whom are not of Polish ethnicity, but Polish nationals). There are almost 38 million Poles in Poland alone. There are also Polish minorities in the surrounding countries including (Germany), and indigenous minorities in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, northern and eastern Lithuania, western Ukraine, and western Belarus. There are some smaller indigenous minorities in nearby countries such as Moldova. There is also a Polish minority in Russia which includes indigenous Poles as well as those forcibly deported during and after World War II; the total number of Poles in what was the former Soviet Union is estimated at up to 3 million.
Ethnic minorities in Poland
INTERREG estimated there are up to 2,000,000 Silesians in Poland. In the Polish census of 2002, however, 173,153 people officially declared Silesian ethnicity, although only about 60,000 declared Silesian as their native language. In the 2011 Polish census, Silesian ethnicity was declared by 809 thousand responders out of 5 million in the region, including 362 thousand who declared it as their only ethnicity, 418 thousand who declared it as their first ethnicity, and 415 thousand who declared it jointly with a Polish ethnicity.