A conflict is blooming as the Bronisze wholesale agricultural market attempts to shut down the rival Warsaw Flower Guild (WGK) and expand its share of the national wholesale flower and produce market.
The dispute focuses on land where the WGK market operates. Construction Machine Management Co. (PGMB), which runs the WGK market, claims to have legal title to the property. Bronisze says that it has the plot on lease from its rightful owner and wants to stop sellers from working there.
"We leased the land to encourage the traders to use Bronisze," said Janusz Józef Byliński, chairman of Bronisze. "The company that operates (WGK) does not have a permit for this form of business, it does not have planning permission for the premises and it does not own the land. This is why we could not justify buying the company and paying it compensation to cease trading as we are subject to inspection by the Supreme Chamber of Control (NIK)."
Grzegorz Popkiewicz, director of PGMB, said Bronisze should not be allowed to determine where traders do their business.
"Why should anyone be able to force merchants to work further away, pay higher charges and invest in a company of dubious financial condition?" Popkiewicz said. "The idea of locating a market in Bronisze is insane."
Bronisze, Poland's largest agricultural market, was opened in 1999 thanks to a $15 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and $10 million loan from Kredyt Bank. Since its opening, the company has recorded losses for three consecutive years stemming from the cost of servicing the loans, according to Bronisze vice president Mirosław Mazuruk.
WGK, visited by about 600 buyers per day, is ultimately a subsidiary of the Warsaw city government - PGMB's parent. It serves only the local market and sees limited wholesale trade, Popkiewicz said.
The disputed land, located on the corner of Aleja Krakowska and Ulica Bakalarska in Warsaw, was under private ownership until the Treasury Ministry nationalized it in 1953. In 2001 Małgorzata Lachowska, who inherited the land, obtained a ruling from the Housing Office declaring the nationalization decision invalid.
Bronisze signed a one-year lease with Lachowska and moved in to seize the land in October 2001. "They stormed the market by plowing through the front gates with bulldozers while the police stood by," Popkiewicz said. "They demolished the market completely, ripped out the paving ... this is how Byliński works, this is a man who was once deputy agriculture minister."
According to Byliński, Bronisze only held on to the land for two weeks. "A band of thugs led by Self-Defense (SO) members of Parliament took back the land by force," Byliński said. Since then the flower market has remained open.
But Bronisze acted unlawfully in reclaiming the land since the revocation of the administrative decision of the Housing Office was not sufficient to return the right of ownership to Lachowska, Popkiewicz said.
"Every decision like this is open to complaint," he said. "All decisions about appropriation or restitution of property are in the jurisdiction of the courts."
Property rights are at the center of the budding dispute between Bronisze and WGK.
