Piotr Arak, “Visegrad Insight”: For the European Union to talk about twenty-first-century geopolitics is like for Yo-Yo Ma to perform Rammstein songs – it seems very strange. Like America we probably need to change our approach and play a different tune.

40 per cent of the Poles assess air quality in Poland to be poor or very poor. At the same time, 2 in 3 respondents are not aware that residential combustion stoves are the main source of air pollution in Poland. As many as 70 per cent of residents of multi-family buildings disapprove of heating houses with stoves inconsistent with the current technical standards and approve of reporting to the competent authorities air-polluting practices of their neighbours who use non-compliant stoves or fuels, as follows from the report of the Polish Economic Institute entitled ‘Poles and air quality. Social norms as a source of change?’.

According to the new secular stagnation theory, the ongoing technological changes and unfavourable demographic trends reduce demand for capital and labour. The hypothesis is put forward on a par with climate change warnings, having given rise to the environmental movement referred to as post-growth. Piotr Arak, the Director of the Polish Economic Institute, discussed the benefits of European integration as well as the related costs and challenges in this year’s Professor Bronisław Geremek lecture entitled ‘Costs and benefits from European integration in the post-COVID world’.

Paula Kukołowicz, “LSE Blogs”: Keeping people in work has been a policy priority since the COVID-19 pandemic began, because full economic recovery is not possible without consumer demand. Companies are adapting to the new circumstances, but job creation is lagging behind.

Sweden, Denmark and Norway proved to be the world’s most developed economies in the Responsible Development Index ranking, prepared by the Polish Economic Institute for the second time. The RDI is a measure of country development, an alternative to GDP. For the first time, this year’s version of the RDI includes a component related to countries’ climate responsibility. In the categories of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP and emission reduction, Macao, Singapore and Ireland ranked the highest among the 159 countries covered.

Piotr Arak, “The Brussels Times”: New Eurostat data for the second quarter of 2020 shows that Poland is among the top three countries in terms of the mildness of the recession. Polish GDP declined by 7.9%; only Lithuania and Finland (where GDP decreased by 3.7% and 5.2% respectively) performed better.

At the start of April, 18% of companies surveyed did not have financial liquidity, and just 26% said that the financial resources available will enable them to operate for more than three months. However, at the start of July, just 5% of companies lacked financial liquidity and as many as 60% had the financial means to operate for more than three months. Companies’ staffing plans calmed down, too. At the beginning of April, 28% of companies surveyed said they were reducing employment; at the start of July, it was just 6%. According to a report by the Polish Economic Institute, The Polish economy under lockdown. Poland compared to the rest of Europe, at the start of the lockdown, three-quarters of companies predicted that recovery from the pandemic would not take longer than a year. Today, nearly one-third assume that this state will go on for many years.

Over the past 15 years, the Three Seas countries have been among the fastest-growing regions in the European Union. Poland has done especially well: the average rate of growth in 2004-2019 was 5.3%. The percentage of the EU’s GDP generated by the Three Seas region rose from 15% in 2004 to 19% in 2018. As the Polish Economic Institute’s report entitled Building closer connections. The Three Seas region as an economic area shows, the total capitalisation of stock exchanges in countries in the region amounted to EUR 347 billion in 2018 and they implemented transport, energy and digital projects worth EUR 80 billion in 2014-2020.

Out of the 115 countries covered by the Energy Transition Index (ETI) 2019 prepared by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the EU Member State most advanced in energy transition towards a zero-carbon economy was Sweden, the leader in the ranking, whereas the poorest performer, ranked 77th, was Bulgaria. Poland was not far ahead, ranking as low as 75th. Despite significantly differentiated conditions, only three EU Member States have declared achieving early the objective of climate neutrality by 2050 adopted by the Council of the EU in December 2019: Finland by 2035, Austria by 2040 and Sweden by 2045. As the only Member State, Poland has provided no planned date of achieving decarbonisation. According to calculations based on the Energy Transition Index values and the assumed years of decarbonisation in the other EU Member States, an optimistic version suggests that Poland could become climate-neutral by 2056, but it might be as late as 2067 in a negative scenario – as follows from the report of the Polish Economic Institute entitled ‘Time for decarbonisation’.

Piotr Arak, “EU Observer”: Many capitals, experts and politicians see Poland as the ‘enfant terrible’ of climate negotiations. The only EU capital that does not agree to the goal of going climate-neutral by 2050. Everybody asks why? But the answer is darn simple. Money and time.