Reports

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts peer reviews of individual members once every five to six years. Reviews seek to improve the quality and effectiveness of members’ development co-operation, highlighting good practices and recommending improvements. A DAC member since 2013, Poland has aligned its 2021-2030 Multiannual Programme with the 2030 Agenda, under the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Building on recommendations made in Poland’s first peer review in 2017, this review identifies opportunities for the Polish development co-operation system to work better together, programme bilateral official development assistance (ODA) more efficiently, and enhance multilateral and civil society partnerships. Recommendations include moving from annual calls for proposals to a more sustainable partnerships model, strengthening the MFA’s capabilities to co-ordinate with other actors in partner countries and better aligning Poland’s international engagement with its commitments to sustainable development.

This peer review report analyses the practical implementation of the standard of transparency and exchange of information on request in Poland, as part of the second round of reviews conducted by the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes since 2016.

A competition-friendly business regulatory environment is essential for the well-functioning of markets. It ensures that important policy goals are addressed, and market failures tackled. However, regulation can also create barriers to the entry and expansion of firms that may limit and distort competition and hinder the efficient allocation of resources, negatively affecting productivity and growth. Some of these barriers are necessary, but others may go beyond what is needed to address the policy objectives and the market failure(s) regulation is intended to solve. This paper relies on the last vintage of the Product Market Regulation indicators to determine to what extent Poland’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan aims to create a more competition-friendly business environment. The analysis suggests that only a limited number of the measures included in the Plan may address regulatory weaknesses identified by these indicators. Therefore, the paper suggests OECD best practices that the country could consider to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers and boost the benefits that the investments envisaged in the Plan could bring about.

This paper investigates the demand for language skills using data on online job vacancies in 27 European Union member countries and the United Kingdom in 2021. Evidence indicates that although Europe remains a linguistically diverse labour market, knowing English confers unique advantages in certain occupations. Across countries included in the analyses, a knowledge of English was explicitly required in 22% of all vacancies and English was the sixth most required skill overall. A knowledge of German, Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese was explicitly demanded in between 1% and 2% of all vacancies. One in two positions advertised on line for managers or professionals required some knowledge of English, on average across European Union member countries and across OECD countries in the sample. This compares with only one in ten positions for skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers and among elementary occupations.

The paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and limitations of the intellectual property (IP) system in Poland. It offers policy recommendations to fully exploit the potential of IP to support an innovation-based economy. It finds that the key components of an effective IP strategy in Poland should include the promotion of IP use among economic actors and other stakeholders as well as information campaigns and training programmes to raise awareness and knowledge about the advantages of IP. Recommendations also include reducing barriers to IP use by lowering the costs of and simplifying IP-related procedures, and promoting the valorisation of IP held by universities to enhance technology transfer to the business sector.

This profile identifies strengths, challenges and specific areas of action on cancer prevention and care in Poland as part of the European Cancer Inequalities Registry, a flagship initiative of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. It provides a short synthesis of: the national cancer burden; risk factors for cancer (focusing on behavioural and environmental risk factors); early detection programmes; and cancer care performance (focusing on accessibility, care quality, costs and the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care).