Equal treatment of municipalities and regions - WOT participation in the Senate Committee meeting

On January 28, 2021, we took part in a meeting of the Senate Committee on Local Government and State Administration. The topic of the meeting was "Problems of tourist municipalities in Poland caused by the COVID-19 pandemic". In addition to Senators and Deputies of the Republic of Poland, the meeting was attended by, among others, Minister Gut-Mostowy (MRPiT), Dominik Borek, Director of the Department of Tourism of the MRPiT, representatives of the Polish Tourism Organization and several dozen representatives of local governments, tourist organizations and industry associations (mainly remotely). Our participation in the meeting was motivated by the desire to enforce equal treatment of municipalities and regions in the granting of additional financial support by the government.

During the session, members of parliament, local government officials and representatives of the tourism industry were critical of the government's decision to give preferential treatment to selected (without substantive justification) tourist communes as beneficiaries of financial support from public administration. There were appeals to grant similar funds to other local governments, in the amount of at least PLN 1.5 billion. Minister Gut-Mostowy argued in response that the decision to grant support to mountain communes was made at the level of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, which was based on rational premises (presented by mountain communes and the Central Statistical Office).

The issue of the inappropriateness of PKD as a criterion for granting support to entrepreneurs was also discussed, and appeals were made for the gradual lifting of restrictions in the tourism, tourism-related and MICE industries. In response to these voices, Minister Gut-Mostowy stated that the Ministry of Development, Labor and Technology has no influence on the introduced sanitary restrictions and other strategic decisions regarding the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and the issue of PKD codes is raised at many meetings and there is no possibility of changing this criterion at this time. The remedy presented by the Minister for the decline in traffic in the area of urban tourism is to be the Polish Tourist Voucher. 

The meeting ended with a formal appeal from the Senate Committee to the government to open the tourism industry as of February 15, 2021.

Let us remind you that January 11, 2021 the government informed on the resolution of the Council of Ministers, prepared by the Ministry of Development, Labor and Technology, the Ministry of Finance and the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, according to which over 200 mountain communes will receive funding in the amount of PLN 1 billion in the first quarter of 2021 in order to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to this announcement, the WOT Management Board issued writing to Minister Gut-Mostowy, in which he appealed for an equal approach to supporting the tourism industry in Poland.

The following week, in order to convince the central administration to implement the principle of solidarity (which the government called for at the end of last year), we took part in a meeting with Minister Gut-Mostowy on the occasion of working group meetings Entrepreneurs' Council at the Ombudsman for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. During the meeting, the Ombudsman for SMEs, Adam Abramowicz, declared that appropriate steps would be taken in this matter.