EARLY RETIREMENT IN THE PROCESS OF INTEGRATION OF POLISH AGRICULTURE INTO THE EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract

The Polish law of 26 April 2001 on early retirement in agriculture that has recently entered into force is based on the Council Regulation 1257/99 regarding support development from the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund. However, in spite of far reaching parallelism between the two legal acts, the Polish law does not entirely follow the EU model. The paper presents primary elements of the Polish law and compares them to the Council Regulation, pointing out to reasons of divergence between the two legal acts. The paper presents in details conditions that need to fulfilled by farmers who hand over their farms in order to become eligible to early retirement, as well as conditions that need to be fulfilled by ones who takes such farm. It also describes principles of financing of early retirement according to the Polish law and according to the Community law. The comparative analysis of the two legal acts leads to the conclusion that the Polish law is in many areas much more restrictive than the Community law, as it was the Polish legislators’s intention that early retirement should first of all stimulate desirable structural changes in Polish agriculture.