POLAND IN THE EUROPEAN UNION On May 1st 2005 we are celebrating the first year of Poland's presence within the European Union. This provides an obvious opportunity to attempt a recapitulation of the first months of our membership in the European Union. Bearing in mind that preparations for the membership had started a long time before the accession date itself, one can assume with high probability that it will take a period of similar duration to enable more complete conclusions regarding social and economic consequences of the accession. Therefore the present analysis can neither be complete nor reveal the scale of changes, which can be better assessed only in a longer time perspective. However, in an attempt to meet the growing demand on the part of the public opinion for information concerning effects and assessments of the accession, on the first anniversary of Poland's accession to the EU we tried to strike a balance of experiences from the first months of the membership. It needs to be stressed that this paper is - by and large - a "photograph" of a specific period, registering major phenomena and trends, which either ensued after 1 May 2004 or intensified thereafter or started to bring about specified results after this date. The first months of the membership were a typical period neither in the case of previous accessions nor in the case of Poland. An additional difficulty for us is the fact that the accession date does not overlap with beginning of a calendar year, which significantly limits the use of statistical data, usually based on annual cycles. Therefore, due to specifics of the period covered by the analysis, mainly its short duration and placement in time - less than full 12 months between May 2004 and April this year - in many instances it is too early to talk of lasting trends, to identify unambiguously accession-related effects or back assessments and descriptions up with statistical data, which are frequently still unavailable or cannot be interpreted unambiguously. Moreover, the specific character of the last year is determined by the "effect of the first four months" preceding the accession, consisting in intensification of certain processes as a result of certain actions stemming from fears of accession and its outcome (e.g. enhanced trade exchange or price rises). This poses methodological limitations, stressed by all researchers cooperating in the drafting of this paper, including authors of sectoral analyses developed for this publication. This concerns both economic, social analyses and public opinion polls. from: http://www2.ukie.gov.pl