Waiting in Poland
‘Lack of investment means that the chance of progress and expansion is very limited. I guess you’ll just have to continue waiting’.
Andrei’s uncle smiled, caringly, as he said that. It was tough on Andrei Vidomski. He had but a few hectares of land. He could not modernise it – that took money. He sold as much of the produce that he could but with prices so low he barely broke even. It was tough just to survive.
His most modern piece of equipment was one, old tractor. That tractor was worth several labourers but it was so old that when (not ‘if’) it finally broke down there would be no repairs – and no spare parts. If he had not been able to barter some of his produce he’d have gone out of business a long time ago.
How long before Poland joined the European union? How was he to survive during this waiting period? Even if he did survive most of the other farms wouldn’t. Labour intensive, however low the wages the workers still had to be paid something. If they ceased to work then the crops would not be tilled. You couldn’t replace labour with machinery if the machinery did not exist.
Catch-22. without the profits there would be no investment and without the investment……
If only they could join the EU! Then there’d be a subsidy – perhaps even a handwritten letter from a Mr Blair urging the subsidy to be increased!
He blamed Jacek Sarjusz-Wolski, head of the government Committee for European Integration. All this dithering, this waiting. According to the newspapers support for joining the EU was falling. The general feeling seemed to be that only the strong would benefit – something to do with ‘buoyant markets’.
Andrei knew better. If only Poland would join then he could sell up and work in Germany! He knew the figures: 85% of Poland's migrant workforce has found employment there. He’d heard that Berlin and Vienna were insisting on being allowed to keep their borders closed to workers from the candidate countries for seven years. Surely not? More waiting…..and while negotiations continued people were beginning to worry about not having enough to live on.
The tiredness – even the politicians knew of this. Mr Sarjusz- Wolski, refers to it as a ‘waiting fatigue’ because there was a common expectation of membership by the year 2000. But to Andrei this fatigue would be worth it. Rumours were that they would join by 2004. Western investors would move into Poland and buy up the land – who cares if they paid a low price? It was a still a lot higher than he could get now. Maybe if he couldn’t work in Germany he’d be able to sell up and then work for the new owners.
Whatever the outcome, something had to be done Mrs Vidomski was pregnant.
Anything would be better than this waiting.