Abstract
With respect to the topic of this article, reference must be made to two extraordinarily important events in recent Polish history: above all to the unusual phenomenon of the 20th century in the form of the major social movement “Solidarnosc”, which triggered radical political changes in Poland and in other countries of eastern and central Europe. The consequence of this movement was the transformation of the centrally controlled economy into an economic system based on private property and competition. Market economy institutions have been created in Poland. The privatisation process of state enterprises has continued without interruption, with the result that today the majority of these businesses are present on the market as private economy enterprises. This event also had extensive consequences for the development of the Polish legal system. This includes the “rebirth” of the Law on the Combating of Unfair Competition, which was devoid of all importance in the period of the centrally controlled real socialist economy. Even though the Law against Unfair Competition of 19261 remained formally in effect, it was enforced neither by the ordinary courts nor by the state arbitration commissions that were responsible for settling disputes between the various state-owned enterprises (i.e. nationalised enterprise, cooperatives, etc.). The situation only changed towards the end of the 1980s. A second historically important event was Poland’s accession to the European Union on May 1, 2004. Irrespective of the important consequence of this fact in the short and long term, Poland’s membership of the EU represents an opportunity to complete the market economy developments of recent years while making use of the collection of legal instruments common to all the Member States of the European Community.
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References
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Skubisz, R., Szwaja, J. (2007). Poland: Unfair Competition Law. In: Hilty, R.M., Henning-Bodewig, F. (eds) Law Against Unfair Competition. MPI Studies on Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71882-6_16
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