Poland’s benefits from access to the Single Market are five times higher than from subsidies from the EU budget. In 2019 we received net transfers of EUR 11 billion from the EU budget. But, thanks to access to the European Single Market, Poland’s GDP was 56 billion euros higher.
Many labor market regulations were created with large mid-20th century manufacturing plants in mind – which is the spirit of the Polish Labor Code of 1974. However, along with the process of industrial automation as well as the growth of employment in services, the economic reality has changed.
In July 2019, the Polish Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technology published its report regarding transfer of central public administration offices from Warsaw to smaller cities – interchangeably referred to as deglomeration or delocalization – an idea popular in the Law and Justice’s government circles.
100 years ago, Poland regained independence, but its economic success started only 30 years ago. Neither the Second Polish Republic after World War I, nor the socialist People’s Republic of Poland after World War II managed to significantly increase standard of living compared to the USA.
Decentralization in Poland was implemented in two stages – in 1990 and in 1999. The early reforms passed down central government tasks as well as some revenue-raising authority, giving it limited autonomy regarding real estate taxes, local fees, and other minor taxes.
Apart from modern enterprises competing in international markets, there are more small enterprises of very low productivity in Poland than in developed countries. FOR estimates that half of Polish GDP is produced by at most 5.6 million people.
In his first parliamentary speech, PM Mateusz Morawiecki repeated many theses of the government. Some of them are wrong and contradict the experiences of other countries. Others, while right, stand in clear contradiction with the actual actions of the Polish government.
The Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been using state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to push for changes in the justice system that are detrimental to rule of law, economic growth, and civil liberties. At the same time, SOEs saved the Polish Mining Group (PGG) from bankruptcy.
Lowering the retirement age is contrary to the plan of Mateusz Morawiecki, Minister of Economy, which rightly linked in one of the documents the decline in working-age population with a slowdown in economic growth. It will put a drag on catching up with the Western Europe’s living standards.
The proposed restrictions to posting of workers disproportionally hit the poorer Member States from Eastern and Southern Europe. However, these countries should not push for retaliatory regulations to protect their home markets, but to block “equal pay for equal work in the same place” and further liberalise trade in services.
