Reports

Coal dominates the power sector of Poland, where it is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions as well as a major employer. Whether coal continues to fuel the economy over the longer term will be one of the central issues addressed in an update to Poland’s long-term energy strategy, which is expected in 2017. The country’s new energy plan will prioritise long-term energy security, placing a strong emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, increasing energy efficiency and decarbonising the transport system. Nuclear power could play a significant role in the country’s energy supply. While the country has experienced strong growth in renewable energy over the past decade, the future looks uncertain. Given these possible changes, the new energy strategy will require significant investments to reduce the share of carbon-intensive power plants and increase the share of low-carbon energy. While Polish energy infrastructure has been modernised, further investments are needed to strengthen integration with neighbouring markets. In this context, this latest IEA review of the energy policies of Poland examines the present landscape and makes recommendations for further improvements – recommendations that are intended to guide the country towards a more secure and sustainable energy future.

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts periodic reviews of the individual development co-operation efforts of DAC members. The policies and programmes of each member are critically examined approximately once every five years. This review assesses the performance of Poland, not just that of its development co-operation agency, and examines both policy and implementation. It takes an integrated, system-wide perspective on the development co-operation and humanitarian assistance activities of Poland.

Twenty years into its membership in the OECD, Poland has achieved impressive progress in terms of the living standards of its citizens. The country did not only manage to significantly reduce the GDP per capita gap with other OECD countries, but it also caught up with respect to several other dimensions of well-being. To ensure further widespread improvements in living standards, Poland needs to continue to move towards higher-technology production, boosting productivity and improving access to high-quality jobs and good pay. This report reviews recently implemented and planned reforms that aim to achieve these goals and proposes further policy measures to help Poland make the shift towards a more knowledge-based economy. To safeguard inclusiveness, it is crucial that the government also put in place appropriate policies to ensure that no one is left behind during this transformation and that all firms and all citizens can equally participate in and benefit from it.

Lodz – the third largest city in Poland – is undertaking several major projects that have the potential to significantly reinvigorate the economy. Following the collapse of its traditional manufacturing industries in the late 1990s, Lodz went through a period of economic decline. A series of infrastructure investments and new developments are presently transforming its city centre and increasing its transportation connectivity. Coherent land-use practices across the areas where people live and work will be critical for the city and its surrounding communities to develop in a socially, environmentally, and fiscally sustainable way. This case study of the governance of land use in Lodz illustrates many promising practices and offers guidance on how to make the governance structure and planning system more coherent and robust both in Lodz, and in Poland more generally. This is the first in a series of five case studies on the governance of land use, which will culminate in a synthesis report to be published in 2017.

With the rising economic importance of human resources and skills, employment and training agencies are often expected to play a more important role in local strategies to support new job creation, facilitate restructuring and increase productivity. The OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Programme has developed a series of reviews on Local Job Creation to examine the contribution of local labour market policy to boosting quality employment and enhancing productivity. For Poland, the review has looked at the range of institutions and bodies involved in employment and skills policies, focusing on local strategies in the city of Poznań and the Radomski sub-region.

The State continues to remain an important shareholder in listed companies worldwide, especially among emerging economies, which rely increasingly on mixed-ownership models. With the benefit of hindsight and more recent examples, this book provides fresh perspectives on the motivation to list state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the process it entails. Drawing from the experiences of five economies (People's Republic of China, India, New Zealand, Poland and Turkey), the book concludes that broadened ownership generally has a positive impact on the governance and performance of these companies. However, country practices show that the act of listing cannot guarantee that these companies are completely averse to State interests; and deviations from sound corporate governance practices, as enshrined in the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of SOEs, can in some cases, raise concerns with regards to non-State shareholder rights, commercial orientation, board independence, conflicting State objectives, transparency, disclosure and more.