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Poland's social and economic development is closely connected with the implementation of systemic transformations, which were started six years ago.
A short list of the indisputable achievments of the transformation process would have to include putting an end to the catastrophic slump at the turn of the last decade, taking the economy to the road of fast recovery, effecting radical changes in property relations, giving real incentives to private enterprise, setting in motion the process of continual improvement of efficiency both on the macroeconomic and the microeconomic level, and finally opening the Polish economy to the world market.

The succes of the transformation process is indicated by the dynamic growth of the Gross National Product. Industrial production has already passed the levels of 1989; the exports are rising; Poland's foreign reserves are at record levels; Polish currency has been getting stronger all the time now; the levels of unemployment and inflation are declining. Large chunks of the economy have been privatized and process continues. Institutional changes which make all those achievments possible as well as the on-going process of adaptation to the standards of the European Union have enabled poland to join again the mainstream of civilized progress.

At the same time, however, systemic transformation on that scale claims considerable social costs. They include a drop in the living standards of vast sections of the population; the emergence of the whole aas of poverty and deprivation, the persistance of unemployment and enemployment traps; the rapid growth of disparities in the distribution of National Income; restrictive fiscal and monetary policies; an erosion of standards and the accumulation of breakdown symptoms in public health care, public education and the state social-security system.
All that has spurred social frustration and increased the potential for social conflicts.