“EU funds helped create a lot of work places,” comments Ernest Pytlarczyk from BRE Bank. High European subsidies, which equal
3 percent of Poland’s GDP, also helped boost Polish economy and avoid recession, writes Rzeczpospolita.
I have to say that Mr. Pytlarczyk's Mathemathics teacher in Primary School has done
an appalling job.
Polish GDP in 2008 was roughly 570 billion euro, and we received about 3.6 billion
euro from EU subsidies which amounts to about
0.63% of our GDP.
Even if we take this year's figures (5.5 billion subsidies) - it won't even be 1%
of Polish GDP.
It is also worth pointing out that 3.6 billion that we received last year divided
by 38 million Poles equals 94 euro/year - that's
25 eurocents a day per capita.
As much as I like our EU friends and as much as I appreciate their help, I think we
can safely say that
Poles would be quite fine even without this 25 cents a day
and that the quality of out lives are not THAT significantly improved by receiving
this 25 cents :-)
When we add to that the money that Poland has to pay to the common EU budget
(
about 2.4 billion euro), the enormous cost of supporting the army of civil servants
necessary to enforce EU's laws and policies (some of them quite absurd) and the
limitations that the membership puts on our economy (in terms of taxes for example),
then we can clearly see that all this talk about how much Poland benefits from being
a EU member is nothing more than fairy tales.
Most people in Poland see this, but they think that at least our people can work
in some of EU countries and that's the only benefit we really get from the membership.
However, those people have to ask themselves if exporting 3 million, mostly young,
people is such a great thing for a country with as low a birthrate as Poland's.