Profil:
Cognor Holding SAPolish industry fears lack of competitiveness against non-EU firms
Polish industry fears a lack of competitiveness against non-EU companies, Polish entrepreneurs said during a debate. They also touched on the condition of Polish industry after the introduction of EU regulations such as ETS, ESG reporting and the Green Deal.
In the debate "Polish industry here and now", as part of the EEC Trends conference, speakers referred, among other things, to the topic of the competitiveness of Polish and European companies in comparison with companies from outside the European Union. Emerging arguments included ETS, ESG reporting and the Green Deal.
Przemyslaw Sztuczkowski, CEO of listed metals firm Cognor Holding, said that the Green Deal had completely destroyed the industry in the European Union.
"We will not survive. There is a euthanasia of industry, the whole industry, not just steel, not just chemicals, nitrogen. Let's face it, the green deal has completely destroyed industry in the European Union. This is euthanasia on a living organism," he said.
The chairman added that as steelmakers they are in favour of the Green Deal, but not the way it has been introduced.
Another problem he sees is the unrestricted admission of imports into the European Union.
"We know all the steel production costs that are in Japan, we know to the nearest zloty, to the nearest yan (...) The reason is that they don't pay any levies, no ETS, no ESG," he added.
Adam Leszkiewicz, CEO of listed chemicals group Azoty, also spoke about the lack of competitiveness.
"It is about selling goods produced under the same conditions. In this case, we are dealing with free access to the Polish market for fertilisers from Belarus or Russia, but those fertilisers are produced under different conditions. The price of gas is just the first example," said the CEO of Azoty.
He added that something that could improve the situation of European companies would be customs duties imposed on companies from outside the EU. In his opinion, only then could Polish and European companies compete effectively with others.
Roman Przybylski, deputy CEO of listed metals group Kety, said that the objectives of the Union were right, but were not well implemented. He added that companies had not been given clear guidelines on ESG, how to report and what was important, and thus all the responsibility had been shifted to entrepreneurs.
"This is just a beautiful example of where this idealisation has gone so far as to completely lose sight of the reality behind it (...) The objectives? The right ones, while the way of implementation is unfortunately tragic," said the CEO.
mbi/ han/