Currency:
Polish Zloty (PLN)

Capital:
Warsaw

Major cities (by population size):
Warsaw , £ódŸ, Kraków, Wroclaw , Poznañ , Gdansk , Szczecin , Bydgoszcz , Lublin , Katowice

Geography:
Poland is located in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, and the Baltic Sea, Lithuania, and Russia (through the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave) to the north.  Poland is mostly flat plain with the Tatra Mountains along the southern border with Slovakia.  Natural resources include coal, sulfur, copper and natural gas, with arable land comprising around 40% of the country.

Politics:
In 1989, the first non-Communist government in Central Europe for decades was formed in Poland . Today, as the 6th most populated member state of the European Union, Poland is a liberal democracy made up of sixteen administrative regions known as voivodeships. Poland is a member of NATO, the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.

Poland is a democratic republic with a clear separation of powers. The legislative power is vested in the Parliament consisting of a lower house and an upper house. The executive power is vested in the President of Poland and the Council of Ministers, and the judicial power is vested in courts and tribunals.

Economy:

• Inflation rate: 2.2% (2005 est.)
• GDP: $505.2 billion (2005 est.)
• GDP per capita: $13,100 (2005 est.)
• GDP growth rate: 3.4% (2005 est.)
• Foreign Direct Investment: $7.7 billion (2005 est.)

Despite the liberalisation of laws in the 1990s relating to the establishment of new firms and the privatisation of many small and medium sized state-owned enterprises, legal and bureaucratic obstacles along with corruption continue to hamper further economic development. With one of the highest unemployment rates in the EU, Poland 's agricultural sector remains handicapped by surplus labor, inefficient small farms and lack of investment. It is the manufacturing sector that generates most of Poland 's income in the form of machine building, chemicals, shipbuilding, food processing, glass, beverages and textiles. Foreign Direct Investment remains high as the labour market is educated and cheap and EU funding continues to flow in. Surging exports to the EU contributed to Poland 's strong growth in 2004, though its competitiveness could be threatened by the zloty's appreciation.

Legal System:
Poland 's legal system is a mixture of Continental (Napoleonic) civil law and holdover Communist legal theory with changes being gradually introduced as part of the broader democratization process. It closely models the French and German systems. Court decisions can be appealed to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg .

People:
Poland comprises 96.7% Polish citizens, 0.4% Germans, 0.1% Belarusian, 0.1% Ukrainian and 2.7% unspecified (2002 census). Almost 90% of Poles are Catholic with almost 98% of the population speak Polish.

Demographics:
Poland has a population of 38,536,869 (July 2006 est.) with a declining growth rate of -0.05% (2006 est.) and a net migration rate of -0.46 migrants/1,000 population (2006 est.) which highlights the short and long term emigration of Poles to Western Europe. The median age is a young 37 years with an average life expectancy of 74.97 years (2006 est.).

Country Ratings:

• Economist Intelligence Unit Quality of Life Index: Ranked 48 out of 110 (2005)
• Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom: Rank: 41; Score: 2.49; Category: Mostly free

Sources & Resources

• CIA World Fact Book Poland
• www.citypopulation.de
• Economist Intelligence Unit
• The Heritage Foundation
• www.llrx.com
• OECD June 2006 Policy Brief Poland
• Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency
• Red Guide: Buying Property in Eastern Europe , 2 nd ed. 2005
• www.wikipedia.org
• www.xe.com