The EU - Positives from the Polish Perspective

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BBC reporter Jonny Dymond is travelling through the European Union in advance of the elections next month gathering opinions and comment from people in different member states. Monday’s report from Poland makes interesting reading as it gives a positive view of the single market from the point of view of one of the newer member states, which could provide some useful points for evaluation in the AQA ECN4 paper.

The mass emigration from Poland which happened immediately on their accession in 2004 did have a bad effect on the country in the short term, as those educated and entrepreneurial people who the country needed to help manage their transition, those with ‘the get up and go, got up and went’ to countries such as the UK. The movement of people – estimated to be up to 2.5 million of them - distorted the country’s economy, leaving it short of everything from labourers to teachers to doctors.

Just as the Polish plumber helped our economy’s non-inflationary growth, there was a waiting list for plumbing jobs in Poland of over two years as there were so few qualified plumbers left there! But now many of those emigrants are returning, with new skills, experience and education which are being put to use in the domestic economy to spur growth there, and there is a great deal of optimism in this report about how the Single Market will help those Poles to generate sustainable increases in wealth and employment at home.