Executive Note

Dear Members and Readers,

2023 is coming to an end and it’s time to reflect back on the past year.

Firstly, we’d like to thank you for your participation in the events and activities that we organised this year. With the pandemic fading away, we were able to deliver all of our traditional pre-pandemic events: a great number of sector-focused conferences and seminars (our Third Female Leadership Forum attracted a record attendance!) and a full set of our well-known and well-loved networking events that we hold each year, such as the St. Patricks Day Mixer, the Odra Riverboat Cruise, the International Oktoberfest, the Back to school/Back to Work Mixer and our Christmas Carols at the British Embassy. We also introduced some new events into our calendar which proved to be a great success: we held our first Female Entrepreneurship Forum in March; the British Pavilion at the European Economic Congress in Katowice, an expanded version of the British Days in Rzeszów and Warsaw’s Green Transformation in Poland conference that coincides with this year’s UN climate summit, COP28 in Dubai. ESG as a subject was notably visible on our agenda with several events organised across all BPCC regions, bringing our members much needed expert advice on non-financial reporting that will require mandatory record-keeping of emissions data from 1 January 2024 – we’ll continue to bring relevant information on that subject throughout the coming year. The grand opener of 2024 will be an Executive Briefing on Poland’s macroeconomic outlook with Prof Witold Orłowski on 11 January 2024 in Warsaw – please pencil that date in your calendars. 

For the first time ever, we took on the challenge of linking politics and economics during the parliamentary campaign in Poland. We delivered five such meetings which offered a unique chance to meet and discuss economic issues with politicians who were running for parliament. All our guests won their seats in the Sejm, giving us a natural link to follow up on all the business issues discussed with BPCC members. The legislative and regulatory area will be led by Marta Zawilska-Florczuk who has filled the vacancy for Regulatory Affairs Manager, starting work on 1 December 2023. Marta brings a wealth of experience in this area and we encourage all members to come forward to her with their concerns and proposals.

Our media and communication channels are key to the efficient interactions with members and partners of the chamber. The BPCC web site is being constantly upgraded to offer new features and better end-user experience, while our new CRM will help us to better manage our databases and email communication with you. Finally Contact Magazine Online and our social media sites keep attracting new followers and expanding their reach to record levels. Please remember that we encourage your participation in media creation and publicity through our channels.

As a self-funding non-governmental organisation, we are grateful for your continuing support. Financial stability has called for a membership fee increase to offset the negative effect of high inflation and rising operational costs. Each member company was sent a detailed message explaining the reasoning and process behind it and we hope that the new fee structure will remain unchanged for a number of years to come.  

We hope you will find joy and tranquillity this Christmas, and we hope that peace will finally settle in the New Year.