Poland’s Social Policy at the Threshold of its Membership in the European Union

Abstract

The article concentrates on factors and tendencies which have determined Polish social policy during the systemic transformation and on the verge of entering the European Union.

Due to a number of factors, social policy in Polana undergoes a serious crisis. These factors include: limiting the scale of the state’s actions and its savings measures, freequent law changes which restrict the number of recipients and create organizational discorder, pathologies present in some areas of the policy and inefficient reforms.

This coincides with disturbing social phenomena which are enhanced by economic processes, inability of often corrupted state institutions and destruction of social policy itself. This situation meets with the disapproval on the part of the society which remembers the benefits offered by social policy in the previous system.

Despite the support of the European Union, the perspectives of solving or reducing the problems in the contemporary society seem daunting. What is more, the EU itself has not created a coherent social security system as its particular members, especially the wealthy countries, firmly protect the welfare of its own citizens.