Gov’t changes stance on business

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced many changes in government’s attitude towards business. The most important is to increase economic freedom for Polish companies.
The number of controls should be shrinking and the accounting becoming much simpler.

“I would like to be a prime minister who understands better than my forerunners that true economic success and the wealth of Polish people are born in the companies, not in politicians’ offices,” Donald Tusk said at a meeting with employers.
Tusk’s Civic Platform Party received great election support from businessmen because the party promised to lower taxes and seek a unified tax for all companies.

Tusk has thanked Polish businessmen for creating 1.5 mln jobs and has promised to change the stereotypes connected with businessmen.

One proposal is to introduce the presumption of innocence to business operations.

“In daily practice now, a businessman has to prove that everything is legal,” Tusk said. “A businessman – according to a definition – is an honest person and has good will. The presumption of innocence is an important element of bringing back bilateral trust in the great economic game.”

As a consequence of this trust, the government wants to reduce controls. According to Civic Platform, regulations have become the politicians’ tool to control the Polish economy.
Another proposal of the new government is to reduce the minimum initial capital required for public limited companies to 25,000 zloty and for joint stock companies to 250,000 zloty. These would be 50 percent reductions.

Another important issue for employers is to accept the euro as the Polish currency. Civic Platform, before taking power in 2007, announced that Poland should be using euro between 2010 and 2013.

Convergence criteria (also known as the Maastricht criteria) are the standards for EU member states to enter the third stage of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and to adopt the euro. The four main criteria are connected with inflation rate, government finance, exchange rate and long-term interest rate.
According to the prime minister, Poland will adopt the euro as soon as it fulfills all criteria.