Following many years of underinvestment, renovating and building new transport infrastructure is an important
policy priority that would increase labour mobility and improve Poland’s competitiveness. This goal is all the
more feasible given that the country is going to benefit from substantial EU structural and cohesion funds over
the programming period 2007-13. On top of the limited timeframe for the absorption of EU funds, the European
soccer championship that Poland is going to co-host with Ukraine in 2012 imposes an additional time constraint
on many investment projects. The country is heavily reliant on road transport but is lacking an efficient
high-speed road network. It needs important renovation investments both in the rolling stock and infrastructure
network of the railway sector. It also faces the challenges of revitalising maritime transport as well as extending
and upgrading airport facilities to cope with the fastest growing air market in Europe. However, many obstacles
remain and hinder the implementation of investment plans and thus need to be resolved rapidly. From the
macroeconomic perspective, these are related to rising prices of scarce labour and intermediate inputs, while
from the microeconomic standpoint the main difficulties lie in the area of the regulatory framework underlying
the provision of physical infrastructure.
