Poland: the good student of the European Union
While European countries are being hit hard by the economic crisis, Poland, EU member since 2004, is the only one to succeed at the game's GDP grew by 1.6% in 2009 and three , 8% in 2010 (source: OECD).
The country has many strengths that explain this singular economic health. Since the end of communist rule in the 1990s, Poland has embarked on major structural reforms to transform a collectivist economy in a market economy. To do so, the country receives substantial support from the European Union to finance large infrastructure projects, including the equipment needed to hold this year's UEFA European Nations Football. Subsidies granted by the EU for the period 2007/2013 reached 95 billion euros (source: Embassy of Poland).
Poland, which enjoys a stable political system, attracts foreign investors, sensitive to the importance of a rich market of 38.5 million consumers.
She finally has a strategic geographical location between Eastern Europe and Western Europe, making it an economic and commercial hub.
The study HSBC Global Connections: Trade Forecast Poland (February 2012), the Polish trade growth should be higher than world trade, reaching 5.7% from 2012 to 2016 and between 6.8% 2017 and 2021. These figures show the speed with which the Polish economy is integrated into global supply chains, especially in the automotive and electronics. Thus, Poland imports from China of spare parts it assembles radios to export the finished apparatus to Hungary or Germany.
In automobiles, it produces and exports of both vehicles and replacement parts. Forecasts of vehicle exports to France and the UK are soaring (respectively 8.3 and +8.75% per annum by 2016), despite weak demand in Europe, which shows the emergence new trade corridors in this area.
If, in the longer term, growth levels observed in Poland tend to be reduced, as the country has caught up with its neighbors to the EU, Poland should maintain, for the next five years, its number 10 in the global ranking of the major emerging countries.