Poland

Nations with a long history treat economy as a tool for strengthening the community, and see community values as a source of lasting prosperity.

Poland has been a target of ill-founded accusations that exploit the history of WWII and unfair interpretations of the relations between the Poles and the Jews for quite a while now. Every year sees the wartime Poland being described in international media as Nazi Germany’s accomplice in the Holocaust.

The countries in the Three Seas Region were hit less by COVID-19 pandemic and are forecast to recover faster than the rest of the EU due to infrastructural investment, good economic location and highly-skilled workforce.

n many European countries the question concerning Muslim immigrants and refugees, Muslim minorities, Islam and radical political Islamism become a central political problem and one of the main points of public debate. It comes up frequently even in people’s everyday conversations in France, Belgium and Germany etc. This is not the case in Poland. For Poles is not a central matter of political dispute, and it does not – at least in the present – attract much public attention.

Despite the pandemic and the UK leaving the European Union, the Visegrad countries strive to further tighten cooperation with their British partner even more than ever before. Thanks to many converging political, economic and security interests, as well as increasing knowledge about Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, and more broadly the whole of Central Europe, one can count on maintaining close relations also in the future and a growing mutual inspiration.

We know it from anecdotes, family keepsakes, and politicised stories. Wondering what it used to be, why our parents joined the cause, what it was that they criticised and why.

The year 1989 would not have happened if it had not been for 1920. Both are worthy of the name “annus mirabilis”.

The Battle of Warsaw in 1920 was not only a culminating moment of the Polish-Bolshevik war but also one of the decisive events in the history of Europe and the world. The British diplomat Lord Edgar Vincent D’Abernon, an eyewitness to those events, claimed in his book The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World that the Poles had saved the Western civilization from the fanatical tyranny of the Soviet. Unfortunately, the European nations are not aware of this historical fact.

There is no grain of truth in the accusations aimed at Poland that its cooperation with Hitler led to the outbreak of World War II.

A strong, modern and dynamically developing Poland is an important participant in the European and global order.

Russians have a long tradition of blaming the victims by saying, for example, that they are “enemies of the people.” This is how they defined the Polish officers murdered in Katyń in 1940.

While the efforts of governments in various countries concentrate on fighting COVID-19, Russia conducts an operation of disinformation and propaganda, using global pandemic for its own political goals. The Kremlin strives towards lifting the sanctions imposed after military aggression against Ukraine. At the same time, it strikes against the countries standing in the way of achieving this goal. Poland is amongst them.

Political changes in Poland after 1989 gave the Polish-British relations new dynamics and enabled the return to close cooperation that united us during World War II.

Rzeczpospolita, so pompously celebrating the centenary of its rebirth last year, has many reasons to be proud. One of them is the Constitution of 3rd May 1791, recognised worldwide as Europe’s first and world’s second democratic constitution. However, it was not a coincidence that the Constitution of 3rd May was the first such act in Europe and a phenomenon on a global scale. It resulted from the centuries-long tradition of Polish parliamentarism and constitutionalism, dating back to the 15th century.

Today, Intel Extreme Masters (IEM), the world championship in computer games combined with the IT trade fair, is the largest business event in Poland. Last year, during two weekends, it attracted almost 170,000 visitors to Katowice! Katowice has grown into a global capital of e-sport, and although last year’s IEM was also organised in Chicago, Sydney and Shanghai, it is here, in Katowice, that the most important finals are held.

Information technology, biotechnology and nanoengineering – the progress made in these areas will determine the level of social development and competitiveness of the economy.

Germany already knows that it will fail to achieve the CO2 emission reduction targets set for 2020, and the gap will be quite significant. That’s why it is postponing the closure of coal-fired power plants and is building Nord Stream 2.

We can build economic patriotism, showing Poles that, by reaching for local products and choosing them consciously, they will strengthen the country’s economic condition. It is the customer – the final link in the chain – who decides if they will use a Polish product or a foreign one. It is up to them to decide which economy they will support.

The atom can rescue the domestic coal industry and help maintain tens of thousands of jobs in mining at the same time. This is essential for preserving our energy independence.

For many years, we functioned in Poland in the economic sphere between two paradigms – liberalism and statism. Today, we know that it was a false dilemma.