Losing the game

Poland's road infrastructure is being built and modernized much too slow, according to Andrzej Malinowski, president of the Confederation of Polish Employers (KPP). So far this year only 66 km of new highway has been completed, and in order to meet requirements to co-host the Euro 2012 soccer championship, Poland needs to complete another 906 km. To finish on time, the highways will have to be built four times faster than they are currently.

"There is a real need to find the non-standard ways to resolve the problem, otherwise we are at risk of being discredited internationally," underlined Malinowski. 

One problematic project is the A1 highway, whose route - planned after World War II - will bisect Poland from north to south. According to the original plan, however, it should have been completed in the 1960s. At present only 107 km of the A1 is in use, 65 km of which was opened last month. The completed highway is meant to stretch 582 km and the government has said it will be fully opened by 2012.

Critics believe the 144 km section of the A1 linking Toruń and Stryków, where the A1 will intersect the east-west A2 highway, may not be finished on time, however. The southern A4 highway faces similar difficulties, with the section linking Rzeszów and Ukraine still in the early stage of planning.

There are plans to modernize large sections of rail track linking Euro 2012 host cities, but nine out of 14 projects are still in the planning process. So far Polish State Railways (PKP)  has postponed plans to rebuild Warsaw's Central Railway Station until 2013 and announced that work on tracks between Warsaw and Łódź and Warsaw and Katowice will not be completed.

Also, none of the tracks leading to Ukraine will be renovated on time.

According to KPP, roads regulator GDDKiA and PKP Polish Railway Lines, which maintains railway infrastructure, are large, inefficient and unreformable state-owned companies.