All posts by Jacek Krzemiński

“Many villages in Poland, not only in the eastern part of the country, are depopulating at an alarming rate,” says Professor Monika Stanny from the Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The European Union introduces the so-called Market Stability Reserve. This is bad news for Poland, because it means an increase of energy prices.

Public-private partnership investment projects are still few and far between in Poland, and most tenders called for projects to be launched under this formula end up in a fiasco. Without incentive from the government and without some fairly uncomplicated changes to legislation, things are going to stay this way.

In 2012, the EU decreased its total carbon dioxide emissions by 2.3 per cent. Even though Poland has been given bad press in this matter, it managed to decrease them by 3 per cent. In the U.S., emissions were reduced by 4 per cent, while in China they continue to rise, albeit at a slower pace. The EU has launched a crusade against global warming, but other countries have a more pragmatic approach to the issue, which is why the climate summit in Warsaw may end in failure.

LOT, the Polish national air carrier, wishes to apply for a considerable public aid amounting to PLN 400 million (about EUR 98 million), but needs as much as PLN 1 billion. Meanwhile, the prospect of the company's bankruptcy continues to loom large. What would its consequences be? Probably similar to those triggered by the collapse of the Belgian Sabena and the Hungarian Malev: loss of several thousand jobs, a poorer network of air connections, a drop in airports' revenues, serious problems of companies linked to LOT and possibly even more expensive airline tickets. But this is not the end of the world.

Local governments have abandoned their dreams of the cadastral tax for now, but they are still after higher revenues from land and buildings.They came up with geographical tax progression in order to save the budgets of communes [gmina]. Respectively, the real estate tax rates would be higher in sub-regions where GDP per capita stands above the national average.