Word: poland
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...lengthy interview, Tusk says his government's ambition is great: to complete the transformation to a free-market system begun almost two decades ago. The disastrous legacies of 45 years of communist rule - from a bloated bureaucracy to punishing unemployment - have yet to be cleared away, he says, and Poland cannot afford to waste more time. "We have no oil and gas," he says. "We don't have high tech. Our centers of development, are far, far behind others. We will never be an extraordinary tourist attraction. Poland is quite a mediocre country in some regards. The only natural resource...
Making the Most of It It's not much to go on, but Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, Poland's Prime Minister in 1991, suggests Tusk can make the most of it. He has known Tusk since the two men were Solidarity activists in the 1980s, and they still play old-timers football together. "Tusk is pure striker," says Bielecki, now CEO of Bank Pekao, one of Poland's biggest financial institutions. "He is not a water boy or even central defender. He puts his head where others will only put their feet. And by that I mean that he has courage...
Tusk showed some on his early March visit to the U.S., when he told President George W. Bush that Poland's security interests would be harmed, not helped, by a U.S. plan to erect a missile shield on Polish territory. He said that Poland would reject the installation, which the U.S. says is aimed at deterring Iranian and North Korean missiles, unless Washington comes with concrete commitments to help Poland upgrade its own defense systems. He is also vehemently opposing Russia's latest demand that it be allowed to permanently station its officers on Polish soil to monitor the antimissile...
Tusk's line on the missiles was a particularly sharp departure from his predecessor, but not the only one. The previous government, led by Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose identical twin Lech is still Polish President, was so plagued by in-fighting, scandal and sour relations with Poland's neighbors that Tusk's victory in last October's election can be partly ascribed to the relatively competent impression he makes. But Tusk's success also represents Poland's growing acceptance of free-market ideas. In 1993, an economically liberal forerunner to the party that Tusk co-founded in 2001 drew...
Many Poles hope the new government is more apt to address Poland's lingering economic ills, beginning with the fact that nearly one-half the working-age population is not officially working, and public spending still soaks up 45% of GDP. Low investment in infrastructure means that it takes longer to drive from Warsaw to Krakow today than it did 10 years ago. Though the exodus is slowing, some 20% of young Poles seek their first jobs outside the country. "A poor country with a badly structured welfare state cannot become an economic tiger," says Balcerowicz. "If Poland...