Don't count on the Euro-babysitter
In what should have been an embarrassment for our infrastructure authorities, the European Commission last week decided to take upon itself the task of devising a plan for road and highway network development in Poland. The EC stated that the Infrastructure Ministry is incapable of developing a comprehensive plan for the network, pointing to recent plans and efforts as "general ideas mostly conceived by local government authorities."
Simply put, the EC technocrats are worried that, lacking a master plan, Poland will not be able to develop the specific plans which will need to be funded once structural and cohesion funds become available as of January 1, 2004, a mere four months before accession. The country is running the risk of missing out on the offered funds, which would have a negative effect in both the short and long term: In the short term, missing out on the EU funds would mean a net loss to the government budget in 2004, as the costs of accession to the budget will be upwards of zł. 7 billion (€1.56 billion) in 2004; in the long term, the lack of a proper road network will prevent economic activity in the country from reaching its full potential.
According to the EC, a priority for transportation infrastructure development should be to link Poland with its major export markets, which could mean the construction of the long-discussed Warsaw-Berlin freeway and completion of the long-delayed Dresden-Kraków route. Only once these projects are completed should Poland begin planning expansion of these roads to the country's eastern frontier, says the EC report.
Furthermore, the EC's most recent report on the preparedness of the 10 EU accession countries to absorb EU structural and cohesion funds had some alarming things to say about Poland: a "passive" Infrastructure Ministry, public procurement regulations that have not been adapted to EU norms and delays in the implementation of the SIMIK information system to register and monitor applications for project funding. The report was especially alarmed at the fact that ISPA funds, which account for only 10 percent of funds available to Poland, occupy the entire administrative capacity of the Infrastructure Ministry. (Infrastructure Minister Marek Pol responded in typical fashion to the criticism of his Ministry: he denied everything, saying that "we are prepared to use union funds.")
If the EC latently believes that it can shame local authorities into focusing more effort on EU preparations by criticizing the country's progress thus far, and by doing the planning work itself, the commission still has much to learn about how things work around here. In all likelihood, the EC will simply set up an expectation among Polish authorities that, if they can't accomplish a necessary goal, they can simply rest on their laurels and wait for the more competent EU bureaucracy to do it for them.
But this raises an important question: Is the EU any more capable of fixing Poland's problems than the domestic authorities? The issue of highway construction could serve as a warning to those who think the answer is yes. Just days prior to the news that the EC would plan out Poland's highway infrastructure, a report from a group headed by the former EU commissioner for transport, Karel van Miert, listed 18 priority transport projects that are to be completed by 2020. Among the priorities is a north-south freeway link between Gdańsk and Vienna, running either through Slovakia or the Czech Republic. The planned Warsaw-Berlin and Dresden-Kraków routes are not mentioned as a priority. So what, exactly, is the EU's position?
The problem is, simply, that the EU does not have a unified position. The EU, like Poland's third republic, is a fledgling institution that has yet to work out the kinks in its system. So it stands to reason that Poland should not depend on the EC or any other pan-European institution for its development, economic, infrastructural or otherwise. Unfortunately, when over-eager bureaucrats in Brussels start doing Poland's homework for her, learning the importance of independence becomes all the more irrelevant for the country's leadership.
