Any moves of the Ministry were preceded by - typically uncanny - initiatives of the „Friendly Government” Commission, which neither helped nor inhibited progress, constituting a novum of sorts in the area of co-operation between political and parliamentary background and ministries run by the government’s own ministers. One of the particularly ill-received Commission’s ideas lead to submitting the Act on amending the Building Code to the Constitutional Tribunal …

The Ministry also failed to put into effect the long-awaited „vertical division of the rights to a real property”, which certainly does not help develop complex investment projects related to railroad and road infrastructure in numerous city centers.

Legislation of Act on Private-Public Partnership remains not friendly enough in respect to using private capital to finance joint projects carried out in conjunction with local governments. The debate about the form and methods of managing metropolises has not been completed, and it is still unknown what this terms stands for (in the Polish context).

Paradoxically, credit crunch seems the only hope – it needs to worsen in 2010 for the pressure of bringing down barriers and supporting investments to cause officials and government representatives to work more effectively and legislate better law.

The situation has not been much better in the self-governing capital city. It is enough to mention that the local spatial development plan for the Warsaw city center (surroundings of the Palace of Culture and Science) enacted in March 2006 – after over ten years (sic!) of jostling for position, became the subject of the major changes procurement already in July 2007, but for more than two years the planning works reached only the phase of conceptual options. The final draft is to be submitted for public assessment in the summer of 2010 and we will see…

Grzegorz A. Buczek
Architect, member of the Council of European Property Institute Foundation, Vice-President of the Polish Society of Town Planners, Warsaw
Source: Property Jornal Polska Giełda Nieruchomości 12-01/10