Dialogue and Universalism

Volume 22, Issue 1, 2012

“Poland 2050” Report

Introduction

“Poland 2050” Report is a publication of a distinctive sort. While the idea of producing this report has a long history, it began to take shape about two years ago. It is based on the two tenets. The first, raised at numerous conferences held in the past under the auspices of the “Poland 2000 Plus” Committee, is the conviction that economic growth does not transpose automatically into societal (or more broadly “civilizational”) advancement. Indeed, the preliminary analysis has indicated that the two processes are, in fact, divergent. While there have been convergent processes evident in Poland’s and the EU’s economic domains, no such convergence is significantly evident in the case of societal progress. This gave rise to the vision set forth in this Report, formulated as “minimizing Poland’s developmental gap with respect to the more advanced EU states.” The second tenet upon which this Report is based is even more important. Numerous analyses carried out by the Committee indicate that quantitative changes cannot be predicted four decades in advance with great likelihood. And so, we did not base our Report on existing quantitative trends, but rather on analysis of the pathways that will make it possible to minimize Poland’s developmental gap with respect to the advanced EU states. The Report also strives to highlight threats that exist in the social and “civilizational” sphere. The Report was based on the materials published in the three volumes of the publication Wizja przyszłości Polski – Studia i Analizy [A Vision of Poland’s Future— Studies and Analyses], vol. 1: Społeczeństwo i państwo [Society and State], vol. 2: Gospodarka i środowisko [Economy and Environment], and vol. 3: Ekspertyzy [Expert Studies].