Between Economic Freedom and Social Security: A View from Poland

Poland, with its liberal market economy, few immigrants and over 2 million Poles working abroad, seems to be detached from the main discourse of economic rights vs. fundamental freedoms. Enterprises benefit form EU economic freedoms and view relatively low employment costs as a competitive asset. Social dialogue, traditionally limited to the company level, with few national and no sectoral agreements, remains weak: 12 % of employees are trade union members. Employment is mainly regulated through national level legislation, which promotes employer flexibility and competition based on low employment costs. This results in segmentation of employment market as indicated by a high proportion of fixed-term employment (now 26 %) and increasing substitution of employment by civil law contracts.

As Poland did not suffer recession as badly as other European states throughout the 2008-2010 financial and economic crisis, rigid employment regulation was not perceived as a problem. Nevertheless, some temporary measures to alleviate rigidities have been taken, which subsequently became permanent features of Polish employment law. Again, just as in the turn of 20th century, the quest for economic development seems to have had a price of high numbers of the working poor and social discontent.

Against this background, EU institutions do not appear as threatening protective standards. On the contrary, EU law supports resilience of national labour law against free competition of rules. For example, the recent a significant reform of the law on fixed term employment contacts was triggered by a critical judgment issued by the CJEU.