Bringing brains to the Baltic

The 10 cities of the Tri-city and its suburbs which make up the Baltic Metropolis Group explored ways to increase investment in the region at the recent Baltic Metropolitan Economic Forum in Gdańsk. Several experts there argued that before the group can become attractive for production-center investments, it must first concentrate on bringing brainpower to the region.

One of those making this point, Former Prime Minister of Poland and current head of Bank Pekao, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, compared Gdańsk's past - when the city was economically and culturally ahead of cities such a Hamburg and Rotterdam - to its current position.

"Gdańsk is not a city that should compete for a new car factory, because the lack of proper highways would be a real problem," he said. "Gdańsk is not worthy of such a competition. To compete with Rotterdam or Hamburg, Gdańsk should focus on creating a strong academic center, so white-collar investments could be encouraged to flow into Baltic cities."

The Tri-city's authorities agreed that attracting more investors such as Intel, Lufthansa or Reuters, which are already established in Gdańsk, is the way forward. "The region's real development is impossible without brainpower," said Paweł Adamowicz, the president of Gdańsk.

However, Adamowicz also stressed that more production-based investments such as those found in Kobierzyce in Lower Silesia - which several experts cited as an example of an investor's paradise - could also soon find their way to smaller cities in the region if more promotion of the region were undertaken and coordination between the communities was improved. 

"When I meet a prospective investor, I introduce him to the million inhabitants of the agglomeration and not only to Gdańsk," said Adamowicz.

MEP Christopher Beazley, who spoke at the forum, argued that the cities' investment attractiveness could be raised if they took greater advantage of structural funds that are available from the EU to improve infrastructure.