Działalność gospodarcza gmin - wybrane zagadnienia
Economic activity of communes - selected issues

Summary/Abstract: The district is one of the three units into which Polish country is divided. It encompasses citizens (who comprise the local community) and the district area. It possesses legal entity, is a legitimate owner of various assets and is obliged to satisfy collective needs of the community. The fact that, on the one hand, the local government has got legal responsibility to achieve a whole range of objectives, and on the other it needs to manage the assets it has to its disposal, forces it to organize and conduct a considerable entrepreneurial activity. Characteristic features of these activities are: its professional and business-like character; subordination to the rules of cost-effectiveness and profitability or the principles of rational management; sole proprietorship, repetitive nature of business actions; and being an integral part of country’s economy. Business activities constitute a specific part of communal (regional) economy that may have a commercial and non-commercial character.The commercial activities are characteristic of public domain, and are defined as “current and incessant fulfillment of citizens’ collective needs via providing generally available services” by the district’s administrative units (paragraph 1, section 2 of Act on Communal Activities). In this scope (i.e. within the public domain) business activities are not subject to any restrictions. From the very nature of local government, and according to paragraph 9, section 2 of Local Government Act, it is evident that public domain activities of local governments are desirable, allowed, necessary and possible. However, those commercial activities that are beyond the public domain may be held only in situations enumerated by the Act on Communal Activities (paragraph 10 and 13, section 1) and only if these activities are undertaken on behalf of a limited/public limited company. This business activity “is to satisfy collective needs of the community”, and, in agreement with the auxiliary principle, it should be organized in those capacities and fields that cannot be satisfied by the private sector. Local governments should refrain from those commercial activities that collide with the interests of private entrepreneurs and from these sectors in which collective needs have already been satisfied.

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