Poland is now facing the positive challenges of EU membership

Environmental protection is one of the greatest challenges to EU integration. During the 20th century, Polish industry had an extremely negative impact on the environment, using a lot of energy, water and mineral resources, while polluting air, rivers and lakes. In addition, cities didn’t have appropriate water and waste water infrastructure and a lot of untreated waste water was transported by the Oder and Vistula rivers to the Baltic Sea.

Polish experts were aware that they needed know-how, new procedures, new investments and new approaches to tackle this problem. EU integration allowed Poland to develop a huge environmental protection programme. Before 2004, the country used pre-accession funds like Phare, the Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre Accession (ISPA) and the Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development to do this. ISPA was created in 1999 to support investment in transport and environmental protection infrastructure.