The end of the market economy?

With more than 5,000 businesses and an estimated turnover of zł.12 billion, Warsaw's Stadion market is the largest of its kind in Europe. However, the core of its trade is illegal or bootlegged goods such as software, alcohol, cigarettes, and media, not to mention smuggled weapons. It may have begun life as Warsaw's largest sporting facility in 1953 but it is a long time since anyone kicked a football on its neglected pitch, and between 1995 and 2001 some 10 million illegal CDs and video cassettes have changed hands there. 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.

Now the Law and Justice party is looking to live up to its name, and Warsaw Mayor and presidential hopeful Lech Kaczyński says he wants to shut down the illegal traders, move the legal operators to a new site and rebuild the stadium. "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.

However, a modernization of the facility would be a massive undertaking. Housing as many as 100,000 people, the stadium hosted the most important sports events in the era of the Polish People's Republic, and it soon became a focus for people, both politically and sporting. In 1968 Ryszard Siwiec burnt himself in an act of protest against Russian aggression in Czechoslovakia there. By 1983 the stadium was falling into ruin and it was decided that its modernization was not profitable and in 1989 the facility was leased to Damis, which launched the Jamark Europa (European Market) in the sports stadium.

It isn't just PiS that has the knives out for the Stadion. At the end of April this year, the former Deputy Minister of Sport, Wiesław Wilczyński, rather optimistically said that the bazaar would disappear by the end of 2005. He insisted that the deal with Damis was broken and that the decision was final. With the smell of an election in his nostrils, Kaczyński claimed ignorance of the Ministry's decision and said that before merchants are booted out of the football ground, the City would have to find them a new venue, and eight months would not be sufficient time. The president of Damis, Bogdan Tomaszewski, told Gazeta Wyborcza that City Hall has not spoken to his company on the issue.

Then the government performed a volte-face and scrapped its plant, with Marek Skorupski from the Ministry of Sport telling Gazeta that they are not considering breaking the deal with Damis. It is estimated that the cost of building a football stadium with a 10,000-spectator capacity could reach zł.1 billion. The agreement with Damis expires in 2007, but it does not mean that any works will start in two years' time. The government's investment plan by 2012 makes no mention of modernizing the stadium. It seems the bazaar, for the moment, is here to stay.