Against the current again-privatisation vs nationalisation

[tufta]

When governments of "old" Europe, with France as the leader, re-discover the taste of state intervention in the economy, the Polish government announced an even greater privatization. Once again we go different path in an attitue to world economy crisis, with our economic growth amidst paneuropean recession.

Around the world, banks are saved with the public money, automobile companies are de facto nationalized (like American GM), and governments are beginning to make "strategic decisions for strategic industries" (this quote is from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009). Hyperactivity of the governments in the market becomes a caricature: in July 2009, the French state investment fund (Fonds stratégique d'Investissment) gave 2.2 million for the rescue of Meccano, a producer of metal toys for boys. Is it really so that the production of toys is strategic for France! - the media mocked.

- Do governments that come into the economy, learn from their past mistakes? - asks "The Economist" in one of recent releases. - Many consecutive experiences of rich countries demonstrate that the state-created "industrial policy" simply does not work.

Western governments seem to be mesmerized by what is happening in China, India and other large developing countries. Nine of the 30 largest companies in the world are companies from these countries. And in all nine state has a dominant share in the shareholder structure.

"Old" Europe would like it that way as well. Apparently they don't remember what happened in the 70's and 80's when governments were convinced that they know better than the market. Industrial strategies of the time ended with the cases of the French electronic industry or the British car industry. Who remembers today the British companies Leyland, Bull? And millions of public money were pumped into them.

Governments apparently do not want to remember what happened in the '60s in Japan, when superpotent Ministry of Trade and Infrastructure (MITI) announced that Honda (then a young motorcycle manufacturer) can not enter the market for car production. - Japan does not need additional car manufacturer - the bureaucrats announced.

State's giants, which now are as examples of successful state ownership, have become competitive only when at least partial privatization was performed. Like with Brazilian giants - Petrobas oil company or Embraer aircraft manufacturer.




And Poland? Once again we are an exception like we were in 2009 when we were one of the only two EU countries which do not fall into recession.

The government is preparing for the largest-scale privatization of the entire European Union – and expects to collect 50 billion zł up to 2013. At the same time these revenues will be a key element in the public finances reform procedure. The only exception here is probably the case of PKO BP bank, which openly supported by the government wants to buy back shares from the Irish private BZ WBK. But further privatization of PKO BP is explicitly included in the financial reform plan.

Unlike his West European counterparts, Polish Minister of the Treasury does not pose the question: "How to build a national giants?" But "how to privatize the Polish Post Office, railway companies and mines?".

Is he right? Is it the right time to sell the state giants? Yes and no. The basic problem of the Polish government lies in the fact that the privatization of state giants is well overdue...


Sources: Gazeta Wyborcza -wyborcza.biz

[Bonobo]

Aug 27, 2010 11:44:17 GMT 1 tufta said:

And Poland?

The government is preparing for the largest-scale privatization of the entire European Union – and expects to collect 50 billion zł up to 2013.

That is already a song of the forgotten past. Rightist PiS rulers have reversed the trend and they press on nationalisation in major industries or media.

cepa.org/the-lasting-impact-of-polands-media-re-nationalization/



The Lasting Impact of Poland’s Media “Re-Nationalization”
February 25, 2021
A fierce fight is symptomatic of the larger struggle over the future of Polish democracy.

Poland’s government is under fire again, accused by its critics of inching the country closer to a populist authoritarian system. While previous controversies centered on judicial reforms and a high court ruling restricting access to abortion, the latest episode concerns the media, which the United Right coalition led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party has vowed to “re-nationalize.”

The government has moved energetically to reduce foreign ownership of Polish outlets. (The country’s largest state-controlled oil refiner PKN Orlen has repurchased 170 regional media titles from the German Verlagsgruppe Passau.) The latest push is a proposed law that would increase taxes on television commercials – a move branded by the opposition as a thinly-veiled effort to drive out of business privately-owned stations, especially TVN and Polsat, on account of their persistent criticism of PiS. In response to the proposed tax, on February 10th dozens of Polish media outlets suspended reporting, blacking out their pages and screens and declaring a “day with no media” to drive home the point that the policy’s real goal is to silence them.

Many see the tax as an attempt to eliminate outlets unfriendly to PiS, noting that the state-funded TVP is no longer a public television conglomerate but a propaganda mouthpiece for the government. For such critics, PiS’s “re-nationalization” of the media is part and parcel of the illiberal centralization of the state underway since 2015. By buying out foreign owners and increasing taxes PiS is replicating its stranglehold over TVP on a national scale, in the process reducing access to sources of information critical of the government.

Supporters of the policy point out that because of the way privatization proceeded after the collapse of communism, the overwhelming majority of Polish media remains in foreign hands, with, for instance, 75 percent of all Polish newspapers owned by German conglomerates as of 2016. According to this view, the government is merely acting to correct the imbalance. By emphasizing the German ownership of a large sector of Polish media, the government has also sought to tap lingering anti-German sentiment among older generations of Poles while arguing for an irreducible link between national sovereignty over the country’s key strategic assets, including the media, and the preservation of Polish independence.

Though the question of state ownership of the media will impact Polish politics for the foreseeable future, the issue goes deeper than jousting between the government and the opposition (and even this binary is far from neat – for example, one of PiS’s coalition partners, Jarosław Gowin’s “Agreement” party, opposes the tax). The fight over the media has exposed a more profound cleavage, namely two competing visions of the “rules of the road” for Polish democracy.

PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński and his entourage not only believe that the country’s post-communist transformation was hijacked by former communists and their liberal allies, which allowed the old nomenklatura to transition to new positions of power, but that the country’s disrupted 20th century and legacy of subjugation have hampered its capacity to enjoy fully the fruits of its sovereignty. Poland’s history of underdevelopment as a conquered nation, the thinking goes, necessitates extraordinary measures. This is the “catch up at any cost” school. Its members believe the country has earned the right to maximize its sovereignty. The centralization of power and control by the government when exercised for the benefit of the nation is not seen as the state’s undue intrusion into the private sector, but rather as a means of reaping the hard-won fruits of independence and asserting Polish values, with the media a vehicle to transmit these traditions to the next generation.

The other school rejects the proposition that Poland’s history of suffering at the hands of foreign occupiers entitle its leaders to deviate from the liberal democratic script, no matter the alleged national interests at stake. In short, this is a divide about the degree to which historical injustice allows one to “bend the rules.” It is also about the shape of the Polish political system going forward, and whether institutions founded on liberal democratic norms can be altered to reflect a country’s historical experience and distinct proclivities, or if charting a “Polish path” risks a slide into authoritarianism.

It is too early to assess whether, and if so at what point, the Polish public will reject this latest drive to render “fully Polish” the country’s post-communist institutions by asserting more control over the media. There are clearly generational and geographical differences at play, with younger Poles raised in urban areas more opposed to the state encroaching in areas of economic and social activity, including the media, and the conservative-leaning electorate in rural Poland more accepting of the government’s policy. Regardless of how it plays out, PiS’s drive to “re-nationalize” the media is symptomatic of a larger struggle over the future of Polish democracy, and what measures comport with – or imperil – Poland’s status as both a sovereign and a democratic country.