A lot of information..

Ministry of Economy

Our day started with a meeting with Dr. Igor Mitroczuk who gave us a very interesting speech about the polish transformation. But at first some facts about Dr. Mitroczuk. He studied at the Warsaw School of Economics after that he was working for the polish chamber of Commerce and as a consultant: first for CAP Gemini, later for Ernst & Young. Since 1998 he works at the Ministry of Economy, since 2006 he is also lecturing at the Kózminski Academy.

At the beginning of the lecture he gave us a test about Poland to see what we know about the country. He told us about Poland’s role as the heart of Europe, about its strengths, like the large domestic market, the central location and the young and well educated workforce.

The economic transformation started in 1989 when the new government transformed the system from the planned economy to a free market economy which was like a shock therapy for them. The transformation and the opening of the borders caused a loss of control of the currency, which caused prices to rise over 400%. Also the people had to organize their lives by themselves. They had to look for a job and a place for their kids while working. This and the fact that the other ex-communist countries didn’t change from one day to another made it pretty hard for the polish society.

After the shock Poland growth very fast. GDP started to rise about 7% every year. The private sector grew from 30% to 70% within 8 years. Now Poland has a strong economy, especially for boots and furniture. They have a strong entrepreneurship, the absolutely willingness to take risks and they are very individualistic.

ARD Studio

After the visit at the ministry we went to the ARD studio. There corresponds make reports of incidents in Poland for the German TV news.  This year they are in Poland for 50 years for Radio and 40 years for TV. The studio is run together from RBB and WDR who rotate all 5 years. Every week the staff of the studio sent a list with all the issues which are happening at the moment and they can tell about to the editorial office in Germany, where the editorial staff decides whether they want to send the report or not. If one of the issues is ordered the reporters in Poland start to make the report.

The staff of the studio gave us a very interesting guidance through the studio and we could see how cutting works and, as a highlight, how it works if there is a live connection. They showed us all the equipment and one of us even was allowed to sit on the correspondents place.

The team of the studio persists of one correspondent, three producers, two camera men and two secretaries. Because they aren’t able to film all by themself, they sometimes also buy contents from the polish TV.

German embassy

At the end of our day we went to the German embassy. There we met Matthias Rehm, the German economic consultant, who told us economic facts and economic and financial reforms in Poland. He said that Poland is rising. There’s a upturn in the country, they improve their infrastructure, reduce bureaucracy and taxes and they want to introduce the Euro. About the bilateral relationship between Poland and Germany he told us that both of them have the same goals. They want to strengthen the political and economic unity in Europe and have a stronger global ability to compete.

Another issue was the Polish German trade relations. For Poland Germany is the biggest trade partner, the other way round Poland for Germany is number 10. Most of the German exports are manufactures of engine building and this is also the other way round. German firms which invested in Poland are for example VW, Deutsche Bank, Siemens or BASF.

Not only the trade, but also the tourism between Germany and Poland is very important. More than 4.7 mio Germanss visit Poland every year and nearly 1.5 mio Polands spend their holidays in Germany, which is a very important factor of the bilateral economic relations.

At the end Mr Rehm told us about the business of the trade service of the embassy. Their main functions are the economic reporting to the government of Germany, have talks to the Polish government and the parliament, to assistant German visitors from parliament and government and to do Publicity work.