The EU common agricultural policy and problems with the integration of Polish agriculture

摘要

The main problems facing Poland's agriculture in its integration with the European Union are: the low effectiveness of production which is accompanied by the faulty structures in agriculture, including the agrarian and socio-vocational structure; the lack of a system of institutions that could efficiently service development processes; excessive centralism and insufficient competencies of local authorities which hampers the initiative of rural communities. The distance separating the Polish rural community and agriculture from European structures is great and efforts to reduce that distance will take a long time and will be difficult, costly and socially painful. The concept of the Common AgricuLtural Policy will most probably apply only to a small extent to Polish agricultures due to the high cost of financing its adjustment to the EU regulations, the scale of the necessary expenditures, and also the difference between the level of income of agriculture and other sectors of the economy. The direction of reforms in the European Union and the low degree of prosperity and structural backwardness of the countries that are to join the European Union (Poland includes) suggest that greater importance will be attached in the EU policy to the development of rural areas. The ability of Polish agriculture to modernise will depend mainly on changes taking place in villages and small towns, and especially on the resolution of problems on the labour market (registered and hidden unemployment caused by the excessively fragmented agrarian structure of many regions, faulty social and vocational structure, low qualifications of the workforce, extremely low productivity in agriculture, the fall in the number of rural households whose only source of income is farming). In this situation the European Union's regional structural policy will be of crucial significance as well as proper preparation to use European structural funds.