Cover Feature: Bordering on prosperity
Henryk Lenkiewicz knows the costs and benefits of life on Poland's Eastern border. Lenkiewicz has been mayor or vice mayor of Kuźnica Białostocka, on Poland's frontier with Belarus, for 12 years. He watched the border open up in 1990 and saw the reawakening of trade and interaction - and the problems that came with it. And then he saw businesses in his city come to a virtual standstill when technical problems closed the border for almost three months in 2000. "Our town almost died in the economic sense," the mayor said. "When the border was closed, everything went down, all the entrepreneurship faded and the streets of Kuźnica were blocked by unhappy citizens. We have no other option but to trade with Belarus to make a living." An ongoing renovation project at the city's international road crossing is a setback but Lenkiewicz hopes that membership in the European Union, on track for 2004, will help provide an economic boost to his city as Poland's Eastern frontier becomes the EU's new border.
But experts are worried that EU requirements, far from helping communities along Poland's 1,245-kilometer Eastern border, will choke off trade, damage local cross-border ties and hurt political relations - in effect, cutting off neighbors rather than reaching out to help them become more stable. "The impact will be noticeable at several levels and it won't be just people in the border region," said Katarzyna Wolczuk, a lecturer in Ukrainian studies at the University of Birmingham, U.K. "The whole strategic relationship will be affected. People to the East, Ukrainians, are deeply skeptical that Poland can introduce a new regime that will not be a new Iron Curtain." A new visa requirement for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine lies at the heart of concern. Post-World War II borders have effectively been open only since the early 1990s, after Communist parties fell apart and national governments broke the Soviet Union's grip. Today, Belorussians and Russians require a voucher - available at the border - and Ukrainians require nothing to travel into Poland. But starting July 1, 2003, nationals from those three countries will need a visa to enter Poland. "We cannot avoid this procedure," said Marek Siwiec, secretary of state for President Aleksander Kwaśniewski's national security office. "We have to follow the requirements of the EU."
Schengen The Western political and economic bloc operates its borders on the Schengen system, which has eliminated internal border checkpoints and controls for 13 of the 15 EU member states and two European Economic Area (EEA) member states. With a Schengen visa, a non-citizen can enter one country and travel freely throughout the Schengen zone. As part of EU negotiations, Poland has to fully adopt EU law on justice and home affairs, including the external border controls. "The Poles are required to keep a border up to Schengen standards," said Val Białobrzycki, first counselor at the EU's European Commission delegation in Warsaw. "In practice this means they have to demonstrate they can control people as they move across the border. Perhaps the most important thing really is the question of a visa, because there is a common visa system that has to be accepted by Poland on membership. And the list is the one agreed by all member states. This is why Poland will be introducing visas for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in the middle of next year." The government is concerned but says the challenges of the new system are not insurmountable. "Of course there are some threats but to be honest if we know how to define these threats and are determined to overcome them I think this is not very serious," Siwiec said. "Entry to Poland will in no way be obstructed," said Bogusław Majewski, spokesman for Poland's Foreign Affairs Ministry. The government is working to educate citizens across the border about the new visas, is opening new consulates and hiring more personnel to staff them, he said. Today Poland has 10 consulates in the three Eastern neighbors; four are in Russia, including one in the Kaliningrad enclave, three in Belarus and three in Ukraine. Plans are in the works to open two more consulates in the Ukrainian cities of Luck and Odessa.
South of the border But if the experience of other EU aspirants is any guide, the initial impact will be significant. "We registered a real dramatic decline in the number of persons who crossed," said Alexander Duleba, director of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association's research center. Slovakia introduced visas for Ukrainians in June 2000. In the process, annual visits by Ukrainian citizens dropped more than five-fold, to 278,000 persons from 1.7 million, he said. To help mitigate the situation, the government lifted some visa requirements for people from 83 villages along both sides of the Slovak-Ukrainian border but Duleba does not expect a quick return to pre-visa crossing levels. Paradoxically, while Slovak-Ukraine border traffic dropped, trade did not. "Small cross-border trade has been negatively influenced but with economic exchange, the data show us that the turnover in 1999 was Kc 12 billion ($253 million), in 2000 it was Kc 15 billion ($316 million) and 2001 shows us Kc 17 billion ($358 million)," he said. "So this is a very interesting conclusion. Expectations that introduction of visas will hamper relations are not relevant."
Marching ants People living and working - sometimes illegally - along the border are less certain. "We have been doing this for some years now and this is the main source of our income," said a Belorussian day trader in the Polish city of Sokółka. "Implementation of visas will affect us greatly. We don't see the point in lowering income of people living near the border, our income is already miserable." The traders, known as "ants" in local parlance, run vodka, cigarettes and sometimes gasoline across the border and sell them out of the trunks of their cars. Traders in a Sokółka parking lot - none of whom would give names for fear of reprisals by border guards - said they find a ready market in Poland. The small-scale smugglers said they make two to three trips across the border per week and can earn up to $50 per day - about their monthly wage back home. New Schengen visas will be expensive, they worried, making cross-border trips less profitable. "It would be more profitable for us to go to Germany, where the prices suit us better," said one trader. "If only we could afford that higher price." The Polish government has not yet set a price for the new visas, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said last week. On the Polish side, the traders buy products that are much cheaper here, especially meat. The loss of day-to-day trade will be devastating, according to some. "The borderland economy is at stake," said Marzena Kisielowska-Lipman, from the University of Birmingham's Center for Russian and East European Studies, in a paper for the Economic and Social Research Council, a government-funded research institute based in the U.K. "The visa restrictions limit to a large extent cross-border cooperation and initiatives, especially the bazaar trade, which is the lifeblood of a regional economy, as it activates local small- and medium-sized business (SME), such as manufacturers, wholesalers, and the service industry," she said. "Once it is lost, the people who are engaged in it will become frequent visitors to the local social security services." Cities close to the border are less certain of a huge negative impact. "We do not know for sure, we can only foresee what happens as we enter the EU," said Zbigniew Górski, spokesman of the city of Przemyśl, near the Ukrainian border. "This cross-border trade has changed within the last 10 years. It is smaller in volume and different in quality. We have more and more SMEs that cooperate with their Ukrainian counterparts. If the border is to be tightened, there will be no place for individuals, ants - only for these sorts of companies."
Exporters concerned Bigger companies - located throughout Poland, not just at the border - are uneasy about prospects of a tighter border. "We are counting on the fact that there might be some complications to our until-now smooth operations after Poland enters European Union," said Urszula Maryl, a specialist at Kraków-based Grupa Can-Pack, a food packaging manufacturer. Grupa Can-Pack is experiencing heavy duties at the border and expects more trouble as Poland comes in line with all EU requirements, making Polish products less competitive, she said. "Therefore we are trying to move a part of our production to these countries," Maryl said. "The shift on borders will certainly be a challenge for us as we will not be able to export so much and so cheaply to the East." Grzegorz Cylok-Sokołowski, president of Mastercomp, a Pawłowiczki-based producer of chemicals and dyes, is also skeptical of changes along the border. "Until now it requires only a ticket to go to Ukraine," Cylok-Sokołowski said from the company's Opolskie headquarters. "In some years it may also take a visa and other documents. That would require time and money and simply lead to higher costs. Right now, we have a cost advantage over Western Europeans, which would disappear when we become part of the West." Neither Can-Pack nor Mastercomp would discuss specific numbers but both companies said the Eastern markets were important to their bottom lines. Overall, Russia and Ukraine are two of Poland's most important export markets. The country shipped a little more than $1 billion in goods to Ukraine in 2001, a 25.6% increase from the previous year and 2.8% of all exports, while it sent $1.05 billion to Russia, a 22.8% increase and 2.7% of all exports, according to the Central Statistical Office (GUS).
Politics The political impact of a more regulated border is as uncertain as the economic result. Kaliningrad is a special case. Russian officials are pushing for the EU to give the enclave - which will be completely surrounded by EU member states after Poland and Lithuania accede to the union - special status. Access to neighboring countries, cross-border traffic and energy supplies are special concerns. The EU, however, is reluctant to concede any special rights and Poland will have to follow the official line on relations with Russia. "There can be no separate negotiations with Russia on the Kaliningrad question within the framework of the enlargement process," said Günter Verheugen, the EU's enlargement commissioner, in a speech last month. Poland's other Eastern neighbors will also have to accept EU rules on their borders. "The dangerous underlying factor is that it can send a very negative message to the populations of those countries - that they are not really wanted," said Jakub Boratyński, director of the European Forum Program at the Stefan Batory Foundation, a non-governmental organization in Warsaw. "On the one hand it appears technical but it has an effect." Many experts and, privately, politicians write off Belarus, economically small and with a population of 10.4 million, as a lost cause with limited or no European aspirations. But Ukraine is a different story - a country with a large population, 48.8 million, and a delicate political situation. Poland's foreign policy has included an important Ukrainian element designed to bring the country into the European fold. "The (new) system is very much imposed by the EU and it contradicts Poland's aims vis-a-vis the East, which aims at integration," said Birmingham University's Wolczuk. "The political classes are worried that Ukraine's European choice is going to be affected in a negative way."
The election March 31 Ukrainian elections were hotly contested and deeply disputed. Several Western powers hoped that voters would rebuke President Leonid Kuchma and install opposition in the national legislature but challengers were unable to win a clear majority in Parliament. International disappointment with the process and outcome was harsh. The immediate fallout of a split Parliament is unclear but Poland's government has been friendly toward Kuchma and is likely to continue advocating the country's westward tilt. Siwiec, the member of Kwaśniewski's cabinet who deals most closely with Ukraine, said that Poland is a strong advocate of EU membership for the Eastern neighbor, though there is no specific time frame for formal accession negotiations. Poland's accession brings its own benefits, he added. "It's providing new qualities close to the Ukrainian border; for example to get a Polish visa means to get a European visa," Siwiec said. The EU also believes that its eastward expansion will benefit new neighbors. "What Ukraine will inevitably do in order to trade (is raise) the quality of its goods to the standards of the EU," Białobrzycki said. "So I think that being across the border is going to be a benefit - the traders will have to align themselves with EU requirements."
The work involved Poland's immediate neighbors account for the majority of arrivals in the country and the Eastern border is marked by sharply increasing levels of traffic. Almost 6.2 million foreigners arrived from Ukraine in 2000, up nearly 31% since 1995; 5.9 million foreigners arrived from Belarus in 2000, up 80% since 1995, according to GUS. Poland is incurring large expenses and making extensive efforts to bring its Eastern border up to EU standards and to smooth the way for a new visa system. The EU contributed €25 million ($22 million) to each of the four voivodships on the Eastern border in 2000 and 2001 to help economic development. About €ą100 million ($88 million) has been allocated during the past five years for developing the necessary border management infrastructure, including refurbishment of border crossings, according to the EU. "So far there hasn't been a great deal of money allocated to it," Białobrzycki said. "But that's what needs to happen and clearly at some point after accession Poland will have an allocation for this." The road border crossing at Kuźnica is undergoing a zł. 250 million ($61 million) renovation, according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The project will create an 18.6-hectare crossing that can clear 8,000 passenger cars and 500 trucks a day, the ministry said. Other efforts - such as ramping up consular services in Belarus and Ukraine - are limited by a lack of funds. On top of two new consulates in the Ukraine, the Foreign Affairs Ministry plans to hire 200 new employees, both consular officers and local staff, to help processing the new visas. The ministry estimates that in Ukraine visas will be issued at the rate of 400,000 per year a big jump from the current 10,000. In Belarus the number of visas should climb to 200,000 from 30,000. "These preliminary predictions concern the first period after the introduction of obligatory use visas, which coincides with summer holidays," the ministry's spokesman said. Poland and the EU have also poured resources into the country's border guards, paying special attention to training programs with Germany, communications equipment and some high-tech monitoring gear, such as night-vision equipment. Organized crime and illegal trafficking in persons has long been a concern; after Sept. 11, demand for a well-policed border is even higher. The EU gives high marks for a more professional and effective force guarding what will be the union's new frontier and is pleased with cooperative efforts among Poland and current member states. "About one-sixth of the border guard had been trained in Germany," Białobrzycki said. The Border Guard Administration would not agree to an interview without authorization of this article; the WBJ declined those terms. Customs, which has a more complicated job, has a longer way to go and is not yet up to snuff, according to the EU. But the administration is making major strides and working to harmonize with the West. "We must note that customs provisions are constantly modified by the EC and candidate countries follow the changes with a slight delay as they do not participate in works of the Community Customs Code Committee," said Dariusz Wencel, who handles EU harmonization issues for Poland's customs administration.
Looking West Poland plans to close EU negotiations on justice and home affairs, which govern the external border, by the end of June and join the bloc in 2004. The EU wants the Eastern border to meet Schengen standards as soon as possible. But a completely open Western border, between Poland and Germany, is still several years off. Poland's EU negotiators agreed to a two-to-seven-year transition before there is free movement of people with the EU. The Schengen border system is handled separately, by a committee of Schengen countries. "The Schengen border is not going to move for at least six years," Białobrzycki said, indicating that Germany will maintain the Schengen frontier. In the meantime, communities along the Eastern border and companies in Poland hope that the transition into the EU will be as smooth as possible. "I think that the governments will have to work something out to allow local communities to trade," said Kuźnica's Mayor Lenkiewicz. "But there is no choice for Poland other than joining the European Union. I know that this problem of Kuźnica is just a local one and entering EU is important for the whole country. And I know that we could profit from it."
