Poland’s development ministry has published an updated version of its Black Book of Barriers in the Internal Market, a list of obstacles faced by Polish businesses in the European Union’s single market, including inspections, fines, and administrative bottlenecks.
The publication aims to encourage European institutions to eliminate situations in which Polish businesses claim to be discriminated by local laws or suffer from overzealous applications of EU directives.
A first version of the book was unveiled last year, with the aim of “identifying reprehensible practices that undermine the foundations of the single market”. The ministry asked businesses to report cases of discrimination, which would then be added to the document.
“We want to make our interlocutors aware of the existence of the described barriers so that understanding of their harmfulness prompts our EU partners to eliminate them,” writes development minister Jarosław Gowin in the updated version of the book.
The document is to be presented to the EU’s commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, by members of the Single Market Enforcement Task-Force (SMET), a forum for the European Commission and national authorities to discuss single market barriers.
According to the Rzeczpospolita daily, examples from the document – which does not mention offending countries by name – include requirements for special signage on trucks, including those transiting; quality requirements for accommodation (with a fine of €4,000 for not meeting them); and restrictive local spatial development plans.
In one country (which the newspaper identifies as the Czech Republic) legislative work is underway to limit foreign food products on domestic supermarket shelves, which could jeopardise Polish exports.
Another case cited by Rzeczpospolita is stringent obligations for companies to oversee compliance by foreign contractors, which effectively discourage local companies from working with foreign service providers.
Experts cited by the newspaper say that Polish businesses fare quite well in Germany, but run into most bottlenecks in France. “Polish companies are harassed by excessive inspections and penalties,” said Cezary Kaźmierczak, president of the Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers (ZPP).
“French law contains provisions that directly threaten the freedoms of the single market,” he added. The ZPP has compiled a report of anecdotal evidence of issues faced by Polish businesses in France, including some that have withdrawn their operations from the country as a result.
“We are dealing with various kinds of repressions against Polish companies and we believe that Poland is not fighting this decisively enough,” said Kaźmierczak.
French and German leaders have in recent years called for reforms against what they call “social dumping” of cheaper services offered by eastern EU member states with lower labour costs.
Labour costs in Poland are three times lower than the eurozone average and that gap has been widening, despite Polish wages steadily rising https://t.co/7PJ0o4vxVd
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 6, 2021
Main image credit: Rab Lawrence/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
