The myth about Poland and EU fundings

Common citizens of many of the EU member states believe that Poland is the biggest beneficiant of the Union's donation scheme. They're often hugely surprised about the Polish having any compliants. They call us "ungrateful" and imply that with no EU money Poland wouldn't be in it's prosperous shape as it is in now. That's mostly plain ignorance, no will to read upon the subject before commenting and blind belief in what their so called "liberal" authorities shovel down their throats.

I will repeat myself about what the fundings are spent on. That is mostly roads and it's infrastructure. It's sole purpose is to make transportation of goods and human labour fast, cheap and efficient. It's not built with Poles sightseeing the country in comfort in mind. It's only to maximise the profits of foreign companies which bought 70% of Poland as a result of Poland joining EU and opening it's markets to "Those Seeking Power".

"Za unijne dotacje "dla Polski" budujemy niemiecką gospodarkę" - Robert Winnicki (Kukiz15)

First of all those ignorant "liberals" should know that all what Poland got from the EU is about 3% of Poland's national income. In the recent financial perspective German companies operating in Poland received 20 billion Euro from that 3% pool versus 200 million Euro received by Polish companies present in Germany. That's a hundred times more. It makes 70%+ of the total EU funding go back outside of Poland but Poland will still be expected to repay borrowings in future(at interest!) Additionaly Polish companies are being discriminated in public auctions.

The 4'th Reich is emerging. EU is sponsoring it.

pch24.pl/cenisz-unie-za-doplaty--wazne-dla-polski-kontrakty-i-tak-zgarniaja-zagraniczne-firmy---glownie-niemieckie,39894,i.html

Utter nonsense. Most money is spent on farming and other infrastructure. The railways in particular have obtained huge amounts of cash for renovation of lines and trains.


What borrowings? The structural funds aren't borrowings.


Feel free to go back to the 1990's in Poland. I don't want to, but if you do, Ukraine is waiting for you.

How is that contradictive to


?

Mainly because many lines aren't much use for international transport.

Don't forget that the EU also brings a lot of indirect benefits - the lack of Customs barriers at the border and being part of the common single market does a lot for investor confidence.

Even if Germany dominates Poland, this time it seems to be happening without 1/5 of Polish population dying. I think that's an improvement ?
Lots of EU money was lost because of inefficient bureaucracy.
They should finally spend EU money on making Wisła navigable. Ukraine, Białoruś are practically begging Poland to do this, to make the Baltic-Black Sea route work and boost trade.

I have seen calculations put by some economist that prove that Poland actually looses money on her membership in the EU.
Not to mention that billions upon billion dollars are being shipped out of the country by the foreign companies.


Why would Germans do that?

If you're Polish and this is what you think then you're just a traitor of our nation.

I don't know how much truth is in that, but the common understanding is that what we get from the EU now, we will have to give back in the future. Take into account just that, that what we get from the EU, someone is giving to us. Won't we have to do the same with respect to the future new EU members?

About infrastructure it is so that the roads were developed really a lot throughout the previous years, but the railway was underinvested (it started to improve anyway - but to much a lesser extent than roads). Spending of the EU money for railway was inefficient. I think it's on one hand the old-fashioned thinking of politicians (and the citizens electing them) about transportation. Read, for example, this article from before a few days (it's in Polish but there exists Google Translate, but be careful, it translates the title of the article to one with a completely opposite meaning):

rp.pl/Plus-Minus/312049992-Miasto-kierowcom-wstep-wzbroniony.html
- I think that such a thinking still dominates in Poland, although it's (very slowly) changing. Basically, people are still thinking that wide multi-lane streets in the cities is something that would attract business, on the contrary to pedestrian areas. And this extends to the transport on bigger distances. In case of which it's in fact really needed, but railway is needed equally well.

The other reason is the organisational structure. The institution managing all the main roads (except for the sections through big cities) and motorways - GDDKiA (General Directorate for National Roads and Highways) - is a kind of an office within the ministry of infrastructure, ministry of transport, or however it's named in the structure of the specific government. More or less the same holds within the roads of a smaller importance - they are always administrative units belonging to the local authorities. With the railway it's different. The institution to which almost all the railway tracks belong - PKP PLK (Polish National Railways - Polish Railway Lines) - is a state-owned company. And state-owned companies are almost never managed well. PKP PLK is very bureaucratized, with a lot of procedures, which are often obsolete. And, at the same time, they are treated as a company, expected to bring a profit, and there are a monopolist. The train operators (regardless of whether they are private or public companies) have to pay them for the access to the infrastructure - and the prices are often too high. And the local authorities have little influence on such issues as location of train stations, renovation of tracks or building new railway lines - but it's them who is responsible for spending the EU money for public transport on local routes (within a single province). Sometimes they have even little influence on the train timetables - because long-distance trains have priority and the local ones must be fitted in the timetable between them.

Regardless of that, the market of the cargo trains still develops in Poland, there is a lot of private cargo train operators. The dominant means of cargo transport is still by lorries - but things like coal, chemicals or container transports from other continents are also keenly transported by railway. It's different with passenger trains, which were really underinvested up to now, and only recently did it begin to change. The threshold moment was the introduction of the Pendolino trains - mainly from the marketing point of view, but even shortly before there were taken some measures to make railway more friendly and affordable for passengers, like introduction of cheaper tickets when someone buys a ticket early.

Gees do you think anybody gonna bother enough to read that, paragraphs please.

No one said anything about this. Check how much in total Poland received from EU and how big part of that went to the Germs pushing their economy even further. Germs are the biggest beneficiant of EU since it was established.

Maybe because they would be able to trade with a wealthier Poland ?


Meanwhile people who started massacres like Powstanie Listopadowe are heroes. In the November Uprising, about 200 officers pulled the rest of the society into armed conflict against their will. They lacked a skilled leader - their oldest was 34 year old lieutenant whose specialty was drilling soldiers. So they went around the capital trying to find a general friendly to their case. In the uprising, Poles killed more Polish generals (6+1 colonel) than Russians did.

A man that survives can wait for a better opportunity to strike. That's assuming you honestly believe EU is a German dictatorship.

I think the idea is that the structural funds go to making Poland as wealthy as Western Europe, so in turn Poland will pay for countries like Montenegro and Albania to also get up to Western standards, so we end up with a prosperous Europe that acts as a single entity to combat the strength of the USA, China and others. Quite logical when you think about it. It means that for example, Western Europe paid for Poland to sort out the Eastern border protection (a lot of equipment/etc was EU funded) - but later on, Poland should then be happy to help contribute towards Greek border defences.

Not sure what the problem is with this approach, actually.

You may cry at financial exploitation, but economic ties worked wonders to keep wars out of Europe. That must be worth something.

Germans received taste of their medicine recently - it turns out Amazon parcels meant for Germany are first sent to a logistical center in Poland.

That's my feeling on the matter. I would rather be 20-30% worse off and not have to worry about war than be richer and always have to worry about what will happen in the next war. I live next to an important transport junction - I'd rather not have to flee my home because of war.

They are trading with the whole world, what they need are non-taxed near-shore assembly lines with cheap workforce. Tusks were a guarantee for them that the whole thing will stay the way it is but they got booted out hence all the recent hysteria was triggered off.


For people like you, who love to be under someone's boot, that could be indeed a cool scenario.


Yeah and all these super duper jobs :))))



Sometimes I think one of our guys run your account, to show that lefties are idiots.


Dude, there's already army on the streets in France, Belgium and Italy. Your crowd of fools is bringing war upon us, the most disgusting of all of them, the civil war.

If you feel the need to bring the army against us, then you've lost. Shame Jaruzelski isn't alive, because I'm sure he could tell you a thing or two about why using the army against protest movements means that you've lost the war. Still, bring it on.


That would be why PO were rapidly clamping down on dodgy contracts, why the average wage rose considerably during Tusk's time and why Poland is wealthier now, right?

did he strike you as a one who lost?


They where doing all that just few weeks before election, making empty promises that is, about what they will do, they had eight years and everybody know that PO talks big do F all.

Of course he did. He spent almost his entire military career serving one purpose and one purpose only, only to see it all fall apart at the end.


Indeed, and those 8 years saw huge changes. You haven't seen any of them, living in the UK and relying on PiS-media for your information.

The problem is that some people don't understand that :)

And the thing is it would really have to make us rich as Germany or France first.

Selling almost the whole country to forteign entities. Rising riterement age to 67. Introducing "umowy śmieciowe"(only Portugal can be compared with us in how many workers are being abused in that way). They stole billions when got rid of 2nd fillar and moved OUR money to ZUS. Finally they even stole more expensive stuff from their work places. Liberal-comunists at what they do best.

You keep repeating this mantra, but can you explain why it's a bad thing if a Slovakian company owns a few chairlifts?


I don't know how to break this to you, but there's a huge hole in ZUS and people are living much longer than they used to combined with dire demographic projections. What's the big deal about working till 67 anyway?


Try harder. Those contracts existed long before PO ever came to power, and PiS did nothing about them. More to the point, PO were the first government to actually start to force companies to use them only for relevant situations.


Hungary took everything from their OFE fund and yet Kaczyński wants to be like Hungary. Furthermore, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't 'our' money to anyone that had a brain, given that we couldn't just take it from OFE if we wanted.


Proof?


Hahahaha. Anyone that's an enemy is a communist, even though PiS appointed a PZPR public prosecutor who took part in acts of repression to lead the Human Rights Commission.


I put it down to good old fashioned greed.

Money disapeared. That's fact! Who took it? Those who were responsible for transfer. Previous govt. That is a fact!
And yes. "liberals" have a lot in common with commies. Equality... Who ruled equality is good?

It didn't disappear. It went from the OFE funds into our individual ZUS accounts. Do you even have an OFE account?

I just looked online and the money is right there. It doesn't appear to have been stolen at all, just that the money was given to ZUS rather than Bank PEKAO.


If you don't like equality, I'm sure we can go back to the old situation where you were under the boot of the Russians...

Dude. Billions of zloty disapeared. Where is it?

wyborcza.biz/biznes/1,100896,15394350,Wielki_przelew_z_OFE_do_ZUS__153_mld_zl_wyparowalo.html


Didn't disapear for you so it's all alright? lol

ZUS has it? What's so difficult to understand?


Why would it not disappear for me and disappear for everyone else?

Really, stop reading the right wing media, it's not healthy for one's sense of reality.

ZUS has published the transfer amount it received and it was different from what was moved from OFE(it was less). Where's the difference? My bet it is in Platfus' pockets.

Hahahaha. And you've got proof of how much was transferred from OFE, I assume?

The EU must be eliminated ASAP. There is nothing good about it.
Extreme leftists tend to say the only reason Poland succeeds today is because of EU money.
This is a complete lie. Poland still has a successful banking administration and with or without EU the economy would be improving.
I have realized how after PIS was elected the whole Western establishment has been almost regularly bashing Poland.
This proves they hate Slavs and Catholics.

These Internationalists want to completely own Poland (via money).
Today Poland gets a bit, tomorrow it can become another Greece.

Christ on the bike ! OFE money (the real one) was spent to reduce national debt as otherwise the country would bankrupt before the term of Platfuses was over. What you have on your "individual ZUS account" is just the future liability that will have to be paid off with the real money taken away from the next generation once you get old.

So they got spent for something other than pensions.

Is it good?

I don't know how it was going to work. With the system based on real money, collected from the employees and given them back after they retire - the problem is these money lose their worth due to the inflation. Money lying either on an account, or in a sock, or in OFE always "disappear" with time (unless we have deflation, but it's not a usual situation). So they should be spent as quickly as it's possible.

But when we are giving the money paid by the current employees to the current pensioners - we also have a problem, when there is more and more pensioners and less and less employees, which is the case in the most of the civilised countries (and it's even worse in some less-developed ones like Ukraine or Russia).

In both cases people get back much less than they pay. What is worse?