No abstract

The study discusses the problem of land grabbing and state interventionism in agricultural land transactions in Poland, and presents the effects of active policy implemented by the state on limiting the flow of agricultural land. The research covers the period from the time of country’s accession to the European Union, starting from 2004. Poland introduced restrictions on the purchase of agricultural land for fear of mass land grabbing, and has currently tightened the restrictions on agricultural land purchase by foreigners and by non-owners of a family farm. The analyses concern the number of permits issued for foreigners to turn over agricultural land in Poland, the area of property eventually purchased by foreigners, the right of pre-emption exercised by the National Support Centre for Agriculture (NSCA), and the number of transactions concluded in an open market and in the form of a tender. Based on the collected data and their in-depth analyses, the following phenomena were interpreted: an extensive impact of interventionism exercised by the Polish state on restricting the sale of agricultural land to foreigners is observed, and interventionism of the Polish state affects the suspension of functional changes in rural areas and agricultural land transition to non-agricultural purposes. The research shows that the majority of property turnover by foreigners in Poland required permits issued by the Minister of the Interior Affairs and Administration. Moreover, priority is given to owners of family farms, which results in a reduction of the total number of transactions concerning agricultural land in Poland after introducing changes in legal transactions of agricultural land in 2016.

The article attempts to identify and assess the investment activity of major Polish cities, taking into account the division into voivodship cities, remaining the regional capitals, and also the ones which, as a result of public administration system reform, carried out in Poland in the 1990s, lost this function. Based on the group of diagnostic features (city investment expenditure per capita, capital expenditure of cities in relation to their total expenditure, capital expenditure of cities in relation to their own revenues), taxonomic synthetic measures for the studied cities were constructed. The research covered the years 2004-2015-the period of particular investment intensity caused by the inflow of EU funds. It was concluded that even though the city status and revenue potential is, to some extent, determined by its investment activity, there are, however, clear examples showing that the appropriate local policy can modify these determinants.

The purpose of the study is to determine the actual demand for the elimination of architectural barriers among senior citizens in their place of residence and also in its immediate environment in Poland. The research covered a group of people in the post-productive age, living in the Lower Silesia voivodship in Poland. Different research methods were used in the study, primarily including the public opinion survey based on a questionnaire as well as statistical analyses. The cross-tabulation analysis of differences in quality characteristics was performed using Pearson’s chi-square test (χ2 test of independence) or Fisher’s exact test, when the expected number was lower than five. As a post hoc analysis, checking the nature of differences between the studied groups, the analyses were carried out using the method by Baesley and Schumacker. For all analyses, the maximum permissible error class I α = 0.05 was adopted, whereas p ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The research revealed that a much larger group of people aged 55 and older suffers from mobility limitations than the ones resulting from disability certificates, thus confirming the assumption that along with the respondents’ age, their mobility limitations intensify, resulting in the need for assistance while moving outside their houses/apartments.

No abstract