Pawel Chmielinski‡§, Zbigniew Florianczyk‡|, Barbara Wieliczko‡|Corresponding author: Barbara Wieliczko ( barbara.wieliczko@erdn.eu ) Academic editor: Bozhidar Ivanov © Pawel Chmielinski, Zbigniew Florianczyk, Barbara Wieliczko. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Chmielinski P, Florianczyk Z, Wieliczko B (2025) Assessment of 20 years of membership of the EU and challenges for the years to come: the common agricultural policy in Poland. ARPHA Proceedings 8: 1-14. https://doi.org/10.3897/ap.e152386 |  |
In 2004, Poland with nine other countries joined the European Union (EU). The EU membership resulted in a total change of the agricultural policy in Poland with the EU rules and support system offered by the common agricultural policy (CAP). The implementation of the consecutive CAP support measures and access to the EU single market led to significant structural changes in agriculture and agri-food industry.
Both farm incomes as well as the level of the socio-economic development of rural areas have grown and the distance to the EU average has decreased making the rural communities able to benefit from the EU accession and the whole Polish system transition process. This changed the attitudes towards the EU as well as subjective assessment of own financial situation. However, the regional and sector differences are widely visible and the rate of population in danger of poverty is still higher in rural areas.
The ongoing political and economic global processes as well as the challenges related to climate changes will require both from the Polish agriculture and rural areas increasing their resilience and competitiveness to adjust to the new conditions and trying to escape middle income trap which is faced by the whole Polish economy.