Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung

Europäische Länderberichte

Polnische Regionen im Kontext der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union

Stefan Garsztecki

S. 284-296

The text analyzes the implementation of Polands administrative reform in the 4th and 5th year of its implementation. Also the new Government of prime minister Leszek Miller (SLD Democratic Left Alliance), which has been elected in autumn 2001, continues the decentralization of the country. Yet the financial basis of local and regional self-government is insufficient due to a lacking legal basis for decentralization of finances. An appropriate law is still in the parliamentarian consultation process, a fact, which had been criticized many times by representatives of self-government. Regional contracts between the 16 woiwodships and the central government became the main instrument of a coordinated regional development policy in accordance with the demands of the European Union (EU). The influence of the central government on regional policy and bodies of local and regional self-government remains in spite of all decentralization measures strong as the main aim of the law relating decentralization is higher efficiency of state administration and not a real federalism.
A more and more growing impact on the level and success of decentralization has the EU. First through its demands for national development programs, which leads to a joint effort of central, regional and local administrative levels. Second through its promotion of regional political and administrative elites to qualify themselves for EU-programs like PHARE or SAPARD. Third through its legal framework which encourages ethnic minorities like the German minority in Upper Silesia or the Cashubian minority around Gdansk to strive for a strengthening of their rights and their regions. The greatest task for the representatives of local and regional self-government in the context of EU remains for the nearest future the qualification of its employees and the preparation of applications for the exploitation of EU-funds. The growing self-confidence of the local and regional bodies and of the freshly (re)established regions will be the main source for a possible erosion of the further too unitarian character of the Polish state.

Zitiervorschlag für diesen Artikel:
Garsztecki, Stefan 2003: Polnische Regionen im Kontext der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union, in: Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2003. Föderalismus, Subsidiarität und Regionen in Europa, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, S. 284-296.