A lot of the previously talked about problems and challenges that Poland faced were supposed to disappear when Poland decided to join the European Union in 2003. Many of them have in fact been corrected and disappeared however many still persist to this day. Joining the European union was supposed to improve Poland's economy, quality of citizens' lives and in general modernize the country. That's exactly what it did however the initial expectations were set too high and now looking back at them most have not been met.
Initially everyone was happy because by joining EU Poland received a lot of additional funding in a form of grants. Grants were given to a wide variety of institutions and individuals for various projects. Grants were used for the improvements and developments of transportation/road systems, schools and education, foundation of small businesses, expansion of large corporations and most importantly in the context of this project: diminishing digital divide by expanding fiber lines so more people had the access to the internet.
European Union also set a lot of requirements and deadlines that had to be met. For example, it required that Poland will have the same number of homes connected to the internet as its mean, 70%, by 2010. That did not happen, by 2010 Poland only had 60% of homes connected, which is not a huge difference compared to its 9.7% in 2000. By having these requirements in place and the means of achieving them (funding) various companies were furious to get started and expand. That was a good thing, it acted as a motivation. However they were so furious and excited to get it done that they didn't think of a good strategy. They came up with short term solutions instead which wasted their money quicker than anticipated which slowed down the development. Because of that insufficient planning and short term solutions those requirements were usually not met, and this is not only in IT, almost in all projects throughout the country. So what does that mean? Not much really. The country is still evolving and growing however at a slower pace because it's funding has to come from somewhere else.
In conclusion, European Union is a beautiful and great thing. Although it had too high of expectations for Poland, it set it in the right track boosting it's economy and greatly diminished it's problem with digital divide.
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