By Marcin Cichy, BPCC managing director

 

I am delighted to be writing to you as the new managing director of our chamber; it’s a great honour to join this highly regarded organisation. For over 30 years, the BPCC has played a significant role in developing trade and investment relations between the UK and Poland, and I shall be striving to build on the chamber’s achievements.

To move forward sustainably, I am mindful of the balance that’s required between the needs of our corporate members and those of owner-managed SMEs, as well as the balance between our work to improve the business environment in Poland, and our work to promote business development.

I come to this role with experience of the public and private sectors in Poland and abroad, in particular at the interface between business and government. This has provided me with deep insight into turning business concerns into concrete suggestions that improve the economic landscape.

Next week’s UK general election will most probably lead to a change of government in Westminster. With a renewed focused on economic growth, a re-think of trade and investment policies is likely – in particular the relationship between the UK and the EU. Poland takes on the presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of next year, as the EU and UK begin renegotiating the Trade & Cooperation Agreement. This was the basis upon which the UK left the single European market and Customs Union on 31 December 2020. The UK’s departure from the world’s richest trading bloc created significant barriers to business, particularly for smaller firms. The BPCC will therefore be well-placed to input members’ suggestions for easing some of the newly created obstacles to the flow of goods, capital, services and people between the UK and the EU.

As you will read in this article, Poland is not ranked alongside the world’s leading countries in terms of ease of doing business. If Poland is to become more competitive globally, this needs to change. Our regulatory affairs work will continue to focus on channelling members’ concerns and suggestions to government – and this government is far more open to the voice of the foreign investor community that its predecessor.

Over the forthcoming months, I hope to meet as many members as I can, to listen to your concerns and identify how to bring as much value to your BPCC membership as possible. High-quality networking, seminars, workshops and webinars, and our communication channels including Contact Magazine Online and our social media profiles, will remain prominent in our offer to members.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the work of my predecessor, Paweł Siwecki, who has done so much to put the BPCC on a strong footing, and wish him all the very best in his future career.