[FR] Administrative and territorial reform of the Polish administration in the European context

After half a century of communist rule, establishing political and economic democracy is not something that can be achieved overnight. In 1990, Poland embarked on a path towards local autonomy and sought to develop the identity of its regions, but far-reaching reform of the organisation of the state had to wait until the 1998 law on administrative and territorial reform. The prospect of joining the European Union made this reform all the more urgent, as Poland wanted to be in a position to receive the windfall of structural funds intended to reduce regional disparities in the countries of the Single Market.

Malgorzata Zaborowska’s study, published by Notre Europe, describes this sometimes difficult path towards Western-style democracy. It shows how Poland, faithful to its tradition of a unitary and centralised state, chose the French model of territorial organisation as its reference model, rather than the German federal model or the Spanish or Italian decentralised models.

As the main beneficiary of pre-accession Community aid, with €1 billion per year, Poland needed an administration capable of defining development strategies and managing the corresponding budgets in its sixteen regions, known as voivodeships, where GDP varies from 26% to 56% of the Community average. Its temperate decentralisation system has, as in France, three levels of power:

• local, that of municipalities, towns and powiats (departments);
• regional, that of the voàvodies;
• general, that of the government and central administration, with its extensions at the voàvodie level, according to a system of decentralisation.

Enacted at the same time as four other reforms (health, social protection, justice and education), the administrative and territorial reform was not clearly understood by the population, for whom it remained overshadowed by the social reforms. Citizens did not feel involved in the management of their affairs at local or regional level. The public administration retains a reputation for being slow and inefficient, mismanaging the funds allocated to it, and turnout in local elections and local referendums has remained low, at only 40-45% on average. Among local elected representatives, who criticise it for not delegating enough powers, particularly in the area of law enforcement, the reform has attracted more criticism than praise. However incomplete it may be, it is nonetheless the first step in a profound transformation of the Polish state and the way democracy is expressed.

This study also provides readers with statistical data on local authorities and the amount of pre-accession Community aid, as well as a note on decentralisation in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.