Forgotten World (193): Poland

Following the collapse of Communism in Poland in 1989, the country joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. Unlike the case before the Second World War, Poland has a very homogeneous population of 38 million, with 98% being ethnically Polish and religiously Roman Catholic.
Poland is considered to have one of the healthiest economies of the post-communist countries, and is currently the fastest growing country within the EU. Since the fall of the communist government, Poland has steadfastly pursued a policy of liberalising the economy and today stands out as a successful example of the transition from a centrally planned economy to a primarily capitalistic market economy.
However, there is still a huge farming sector, which is unwieldy and very inefficient, and poverty is particularly widespread in rural areas. There has been a massive movement of workers to Western Europe, especially the UK.


 




XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>