Reading through this two interesting docs:
epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-23022011-BP/EN/3-23022011-BP-EN.PDF
epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-11-004/EN/KS-SF-11-004-EN.PDF
it reminded me this thread. Here is some excerpt which explains clearly why global debt crash in last years wasn't so devastating for Poland and why it is not good to make false analogies between "old" and "new" Europe economies:
Only 1.2 % of the owners had a mortgage in Romania, followed by Slovakia (8.0 %), Poland (8.3 %) and Slovenia (8.5 %). In contrast more than 80 % of owners had a mortgage in Sweden, the Netherlands and Iceland.
As you can see, mortgages are still relatively small chunk of housing market in Poland.
Another one should explain to many how Poles are make ends meet:
At country level, one extreme was represented by Poland and Malta, with less than 10 % of tenants paying market
price rent, and the other by Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, with more than 95 % of tenants paying market-price rent.
This one somehow proves that Poland is rather safe country:
Crime and/or vandalism were perceived as a problem by 16.0 % of the EU-27 population. At country level the rates were highest in Bulgaria (28.6 %), Latvia (25.4 %) and the United Kingdom (25.1 %), while only 4.2 % of the population in Iceland, 5.3 % in Norway 6.6 % in Lithuania, and 6.7 % in Poland thought this a problem.
And last but not least, this one is about Polish poverty:
The population at risk of poverty, i.e. individuals living in households where equivalised (i.e. per individual) disposable income is below 60 % of the national median, was more likely to be living in overcrowded conditions (30.1 % at the EU-27 level). The highest percentages were recorded in Hungary (75.4 %), Poland (64.9 %) and Romania (64.8 %), while the lowest were in Cyprus (2.7 %), Spain (5.1 %), the Netherlands (5.5 %) and Malta (5.6 %). In Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium as well as in Norway the percentage of persons at risk of poverty living in overcrowded conditions was more than three times higher than for the total population