The economic activity of local self-government entities as public entities in Poland - exception or rule?

The economic activity of local self-government entities entails considerable controversy in Poland. There is no uniform view among the representatives of judicial doctrine and jurisprudence as to the admissibility of economic activity by local self-government entities, and when accepting the possibility of conducting such activity - as to the characteristics of such activity. The doubts also arouse the scope, object and possible forms of economic activity of local self-government. On the one hand, in the situation where legislator increases the number of public tasks given to self-government to perform, and members of local communities are demanding an increase in the quality of performed tasks, the question of additional sources of income, including possibility of conducting economic activity by local self-government entities, as a way to raise funds, becomes important. On the other hand, the pursuit gainful activity by entities of public administration creates the risk of their focus on profit maximization, and thus pursuit public objectives becoming of secondary importance. Pursuit business activity by local self-government is now permissible in Poland, but it is subject to many limitations. They relate to the nature of tasks that could be carried out within this activity as well as its organizational forms. The purpose of the study is to analyse the legal provisions, which are in force in Polish legal system, aimed at identifying and determination of the conditions for using the possibility of pursuit a business activity by local self-government units and evaluation their impact on the effectiveness of the performance of self-government public tasks.