Stadium threat

"The stadium is known for unsanitary conditions, crime, a lack of any standards. If we want to be a modern capital city, it can't go on," says Jan Ołdakowski of Law and Justice.

Traders from around the world hawk everything from sofa sets to pirated DVDs and icons to baby ferrets at the defunct football stadium in Praga.

Warsaw's mayor Lech Kaczyński, a fellow PiS member and the party's candidate in next month's presidential election, wants the central government to shut down the illegal traders, move the legal ones to a new site and rebuild the stadium.

It's estimated that 4,500 merchants ply their trade, compared to the estimated 4,000 at Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. Music, film and software groups say the stadium accounts for 25 to 30 percent of all pirated material - excluding internet piracy -  sold in the country.

Once known as the Russian Market, dominated by traders from the former Soviet Union selling souvenirs such as nesting dolls and Lenin pins, today the stadium is a global village.

A Polish woman, who gave her name as Małgorzata and who paid her way through four years of university by selling pirated DVDs, said the Armenians, Poles and Vietnamese who control the three main areas don't stray onto each other's turf.

Dominic Kinoulty of market-research firm Kinoulty Research says people who do their daily shopping in expensive malls still visit the stadium for black-market bargains.

"The people buying clothes there are bazaar buyers because that's where you get the cheap stuff," he said.

"The others are really saying 'Why am I paying Microsoft ... when I can get 63 programs on a CD-ROM for five złoty?' It's more an anti-establishment thing than a lack of money."

The traders aren't the only foreigners at the stadium, listed in guidebooks as a tourist attraction, says Janusz Grobicki of the Adam Smith Center, an economic think-tank.

"I used to live nearby, and I would meet employees from Western embassies and even the odd ambassador. I don't think they were there out of economic necessity."

In a 2005 report on crime in Warsaw, the stadium was mentioned as a reason for high crime rates in surrounding areas.

Bazaar operator Damis estimates the market's annual turnover at zł.1.5 billion.

After several previous attempts to shut the bazaar failed, Małgorzata is skeptical about the new drive to close it down. "The stadium is an embarrassment for Warsaw. But there's just too much money involved - they'll never shut it down." (Reuters)