"Go back? Not for many years"

I had never planned to join the government, although I had been working with the government for the roughly last 10 years on privatisation and policy creation, with BMF, an advisory firm I created in 1991. It was pure accident, because one of the companies I helped privatised was Tarpan, a Poznań car manufacturer. Marek Pol was the finance director of Tarpan.
Having forged a business relationship, when he became Minister of Infrastructure he asked me to look for a deputy minister who would work on various financial issues within the government. But I spent about a month looking for someone and couldn't find anybody.
After about a month of trying I said, "Look I totally failed." Then Pol said, "Well if you failed you have to join yourself." So, he "persuaded" me into this position. When I decided to take the position as undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Infrastructure I was considered to be a very different animal to the rest of the government, surprising because I thought the businessman-to-politician transition was a more common process as it is in other countries.

I was responsible for negotiations with the EU on transport policy, supervising European community aid money, such as PHARE. And then I was supposed to do anything else that had to do with economy or financing or infrastructure. For a businessman in government, you have to amend your psychological attitude because what you are used in your normal life as a president of a company for 10 years suddenly is not proper. It's not proper to have a credit card. My American Express card was causing a significant uproar. Why was I paying with a credit card? When I am a minister, I should be poor. I tried to keep my profile low, but there were one or two things that were problematic. The fact that I like to play golf from time to time was keenly hidden from my CV so not to cause offence.
Those things one has to be worried about. Average pay of a civil servant before the director level is zł. 2,000 and director is maybe zł. 4,000. That is not a lot of money, not bad for Poland, but overall nothing to compare to doing business in Warsaw. So you have to be very sensitive in how you behave, so not to give offence.
There is a hierarchy of responsibilities. You have people at various levels who are resistant to change. And you can't get rid of them easily because civil servants have a certain job security. If you want to hire someone new it's a very big problem because there's an official scheme. If you want to hire someone as a director in the department he or she has to have three years civil service experience. Where do I find a good director of a department for financial engineering with three years experience? Effectively, it's impossible.

We found that eight times out of ten, we just could not create proper teams. So we followed outside advisers. But advisers are a very fishy business. The parliamentary commission watches after them and asks every couple of months for full reports on what extra services you are hiring from outside. I had two or three people who are working as advisers for me paid by the ministry because I just couldn't hire them as civil servants in time.
The funny thing was that when I built a team of people working with me, people like Marek Belka were asking me how I did it. The policies that are supposed to safeguard undue political influence, which are definitely a good thing, also prevent change within the administration, and this change needs to happen rapidly.
Then there's the issue of suspicion.
Whenever anyone has to do anything with money and decisions, there is absolute suspicion from various corners that you are not doing for the best of the country or government, but because you have a side deal with this or that investor. That polarised any activity. It is much easier not to make any decision than make a decision moving forward.

The people who can survive longest in government are those (maybe not at the very top) who want to be in civil service are those who avoid making decisions because it's safer this way. It was extremely difficult for me and I even stopped trying.
I think many people tacitly questioned why I became a politician, when I had ten times more money as a businessman. What type of big deal what I trying to cook if I dropped that for a 10th of my price? Probably there was billions that I was trying to steal. That was sort of the concept, not spoken, but people there felt it, and people told me that stories are about that: What is Janczyk trying to do? What is this big, big thing he's trying to muster?
At many levels people treat their jobs as sinecures. There is a fanatic director that actually works from 7 a.m. to midnight. But then you see this guy next door who comes in at 9 a.m. and is gone at 4 p.m. He's never switched the computer on. And they are earning exactly the same money.
The biggest benefit of us joining the EU is what is happening to Polish law once we've had all the anguish of getting this legislation through. This is one of the best things to happen because Polish law is often written on a knee. It was relatively crazy.
The European Commission is in effect saying, "You better act differently or you are going to lose money or your are going to be penalised." If you talk to Prime Minister Leszek Miller, he will say we need to change. Yes of course, then get it done. But then when it comes to action, do we pay people more money? Do we hire more people? No.
The only saving grace is this wonderful EU that was saying, for instance, Poland is going to lose another €500 million if you don't get 100 more people here and 50 more there. Then things get done because it is not the government that is saying it. It's those other guys who are telling us, so we will comply.
After working as a politician, and then resigning, it is a wonder how a businessman can survive. Go back. Not for many years.