The Weimar Triangle conference in Krakow. Photo: PAP/Jacek Bednarczyk
“The rescue of industry in Europe is extremely important,” said Olgierd Dziekonski, Secretary of State in the President Bronislaw Komorowski's Chancellery.
“One can see that in countries where industry has a higher share in the GDP, such as Germany at 23 percent, and Poland at 18 percent, these countries have a more stable economy, proving more resistant to fluctuations in the financial markets,” he argued.
The goal of making industry 20 percent of the EU's GDP should be a priority, Dziekonski has stressed.
He added that “the vision of economic development based solely on services,” as championed in the 1990s, has proved redundant, and that this path had “led to serious turbulence.”
Both of Poland's Weimar Triangle partners, Germany and France, are devoted to the reduction of CO2 emissions, a major factor in Poland's coal-based economy. Coal produces over 90 percent of the country's electricity, and the industry employs over 100,000 people.
“Poland is not opposed to the reduction of CO2 emissions, but is opposed to this reduction if it results in the destruction of industry.
During the UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw in November 2013, Poland's Environment Minister pledged that new technology would be used to reduce emissions, rather than phasing out the coal industry.
“Industrial policy of the European Union: the economic Weimar Triangle” runs from 6 February to 7 February.
The Weimar Triangle group was founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1991 shortly after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, in a bid to promote cooperation between the three countries. (nh)
Source: IAR
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