General information about the country
Territory - 312,685,000 square kilometres with a population of 38.12 million, of which 61% live in urban centres (according to the 2007 census), and who are largely ethnically and religiously homogeneous. Minorities make up 3% of the population, with the largest minority group being the Germans (500 - 550,000 people), Ukrainians (300-400,000 people), and Belarusians (250-300,000 people). Catholicism is the dominant religion (95% of the population), with the remainder accounted for by Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism among others. The official language is Polish.
Capital -Warsaw (1.6 million inhabitants); other major cities are: Lodz (838,000 people), Krakow (744,000 people), Wroclaw (640,000 peaple), Poznan (581,000 people) and Gdansk (463,000 people).
Administrative territorial division - Three tiered administrative organisation including: 16 wojewodztwa (provinces), 373 powiats (counties), and several thousand gminas (municipalities), with the gmina being the basic level of territorial self-government.
National Holidays: May 3 - anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution in 1791. November 11 - Independence Day (the restitution of Polish statehood in 1918).
Currency -The Polish zloty, equal to 100 groshy (as of February 20, 2009 $1 = 3.70, and 1 Euro = 4.73)
The System of Government
In accordance with the current constitution of 1997, Poland is a presidential-parliamentary republic. Legislative power is exercised by the Sejm and the Senate, while executive power is exercised by the President of the Republic of Poland and the Council of Ministers, and judicial power is exercised by the courts and tribunals. The President is head of state and supreme representative of the Republic of Poland, and is elected for terms of 5 years in universal direct elections. An individual can be re-elected only once. In October 2005, Lech Kaczynski became head of state, having represented the Law and Justice Party (after election, the President is no longer formally associated with any party).
Parliament consists of two chambers: the lower house is the Sejm, with 460 deputies, and the upper house is the Senate, with 100 senators, which form the National Assembly. Deputies and Senators are elected for a 4-year term in multi-mandate electoral districts, through a system of proportional representation and majority voting, respectively. The Marshal of the Sejm is Bronislaw Komorowski (Civic Platform), and the Marshal of the Senate is Bogdan Borusewicz (Civic platform).
The Government, the Council of Ministers, is formed by the parties that have won at parliamentary elections, is approved by the Sejm and is sworn into office by the President. In November 2007, after early Parliamentary elections Donald Tusk, leader of the Civic Platform Party became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The Civic Platform Party formed a governing coalition with the Polish People's Party headed by Waldemar Pawlak who was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy. The current Government incorporates 18 ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration Grzegorz Schetyna; Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski, Minister of Defence Bogdan Klich, Minister of Finance Jan Vincent-Rostowski, and Minister of Justice Andrzej Czuma.
In Poland there are more than 60 political parties and socio-political unions. The following political parties are represented in the Sejm: the liberal conservative Civic Platform party chaired by Donald Tusk, lead by Zbigniew Chlebowski (208 mandates), the right wing conservative Law and Justice party chaired by Jaroslaw Kaczynski led by Przemysław Gosiewski (156 mandates), Polish People's Party chaired by Waldemar Pawlak, led by Stanislaw Zelichowski (31 mandates), and the Democratic Left Alliance led by Wojciech Olejniczak (42 mandates).
Socio-economic situation and foreign trade
In 2008 the Polish economy's growth rate slowed, although against the background of indicators for other European Union countries it remains quite high. The Polish economy was spared some of the most damaging effects of the world financial crisis. Although GDP grew 6% in the 1st quarter of 2008 compared with the same period the previous year, in the 2nd quarter it was 5.8%, in the 3rd quarter it decreased to 4.8% and subsequently has been lower than 3%, nonetheless Poland was one of the five European Union countries, which saw some growth by the end of 2008. In spite of the fact that inflationary tendencies strengthened, price increases in 2008 remained under 4.2%. The level of registered unemployment by the end of June 2009 stood at 10.7% (in June 2008 it was 9.4%). The overall number of people registered unemployed reached 1,659,000. By the end of 2008 gold and foreign exchange reserves were declining, which continued in 2009.
The foreign trade turnover stands at $375,611.2 million, of which export accounts for $169,536.5 million, and import accounts for $206,074.7 million.
Poland's main trading partners are the EU countries, although their share for a year decreased somewhat in export from 78.9 to 77.5% as in import 64.2% to 61.4%. As for export, apart from the EU countries, Poland's most important partner is Russia, which holds 6th place or 5.3%, and Ukraine, which holds 8th place, or 3.8%. In terms of import, Russia holds 2nd place at 9.9%, China is 3rd at 8.1% and South Korea 8th at 2.5%.
In the past year the flow into the country of direct foreign investment contracted by 13% (12 billion Euros). The official gold reserves as of the end of 2008 calculated in Euros stood at 46.1 billion and in dollars at 62.1 billion.