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Securing Growth and Cohesion in Europeanized Conditions

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Securing Growth and Cohesion in Europeanized Conditions CHAPTER SEVEN SECURING GROWTH AND COHESION IN EUROPEANIZED CONDITIONS. THE ROLE OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT BODIES IN POLAND Krzysztof Szczerski 1. Position of the Regions in Poland In Article 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, it is stated that the: “Republic of Poland is a unitary state”. This sentence defines de facto the position of the regions in Poland. It means that in Poland, all sover- eign power concerns the whole territory of a state. A unitary rule is clearly visible in the system of supreme state bodies (i.e., President, Prime Minis- ter), as well as in the use of a single Constitution which must be applied by every region in the judiciary and legal system. In terms of regions, the unitary rule states that none of Poland’s sections has the capability to be an independent political entity. None of the aforementioned features can be especially ‘tailored’ to a given region. The Constitution, however, does not exclude the unique competencies of a region in the public sphere. This assumption is strictly connected with an idea of decentralization of public power which gave territorially separated self-government communities an opportunity to take part in exercising power and realizing public tasks. Those legal norms are present in Articles 14–16 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Competen- cies of the authorities that represent a self-government community in its tasks are described in detail in subsection 2.1. The regions of Poland (in Polish: województwo—singular; which is some- times translated to voivodeship)1 are only one of three units of territorial self-government. Thus, a separate description of a region and moreover its role and position, would not be complete without referring, to some extent, to the other two levels. 1 In this study, the author uses the term region because it is more understandable for the foreign reader. The term “voivodeship” will be used only when describing a historical context in which regions were understood differently than today. 176 krzysztof szczerski At the lower level, we find the powiat (spatially similar to the Anglo- Saxon county) and the gmina (similar to a municipality, sometimes trans- lated as commune), which are basic units of territorial division in Poland, based on traditional bonds among members of the local community who, in the past, usually gathered around churches and parishes. A tradition of the territorial division of Poland has its deep roots in the 12th century in which, as a consequence of a rule of heritage in the ruling Piast dynasty, a state of that time was consequently divided into separate duchies. Later on, during the times of the I Republic of Poland, a territory was divided into voivodeships and they in turn into smaller units, such as the powiat. The differences in socio-economic structure between regions deepened during the partition period of 1772–1918, when a territory of Poland was divided and annexed to the territory of Prussia, Russia and Austria. Resulting in a fracture caused by different stages of economic and social development, each of those three countries even now has a tremen- dous impact on Poland’s contemporary development tensions. During the II Republic of Poland (during the years 1926–1939), on the one hand, effort was put into maintaining the historical character of the regions and other territorial units, and on the other hand, on overcoming the negative heri- tage of the partition period. After the Second World War, during the more than 50 years of communism, regional authorities and the regional policy per se pursued by them did not exist. All decisions were centralized and the process of its transmission was dependent on communist party struc- tures. After the fall of communist’s authority in Poland in 1989, new gov- ernments tried to rebuild the basic structure of territorial units and their self-government. In the beginning, a reconstruction process started at the level of the gmina by adopting the Territorial Self-government Act of 8 March 1990,2 which provided an institutional and democratic framework for further activity. In chapter 8, the aforementioned legal act, also intro- duced the institution of the regional assembly—sejmik samorządowy— which was elected by the councils of every gmina in the given region and was similar to an intermediary institution between local self-government in every gmina and central state authority. It is worth noting that sejmik samorządowy was not an authority of regional self-government at all; thus, it could not pursue any interventions considered to be a development or regional policy. 2 Ustawa z dnia 8 marca 1990 r. o samorządzie terytorialnym, Dziennik Ustaw z 1990 r., No. 16, Poz. 95..
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