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Gnome Wars
I've seen such things along the German/Czech border - very odd.
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I've seen such things along the German/Czech border - very odd.
The gnomes of Warsaw are lesson for future of new Europe
By Kate Connolly in Nowa Sol
(Filed: 05/03/2004)
Booming Poland and fearful Germany mirror each other's worries for life after May 1, says Kate Connolly in Nowa Sol
Plastic, gaudy and above all cheap, armies of garden gnomes huddle at Polish roadsides near the German border waiting to be snapped up by bargain-hunting tourists from the west.
The gnome armies are the apogee of central European kitsch, but they also signify something far more important. The little men are seen by many in Germany as pathfinders for other Poles who will offer an avalanche of cheap produce once the country enters the European Union on May 1.
A trade war has been raging between gnome manufacturers on both sides of the border since the early 1990s when Polish entrepreneurs, bursting for opportunities after decades of communist-era restrictions, recognised that with cheap labour, low-cost materials and lack of environmental legislation they could vastly undercut the prices of German gnomes. At least five million have been sold.
The results have been turbulent to say the least. While the cunning of hundreds of Polish manufacturers shamelessly copying thousands of German designs has made them their fortunes, scores of small family-owned businesses over the border have been driven to bankruptcy.
"Their cheek knows no bounds," said Andreas Klein, managing director of Gnome-Power in Otterberg, western Germany, which owns the patent for 1,600 computer-generated models. "They copy our designs but their gnomes are very inferior. They crack when the first frost comes, the paint chips off and due to the materials they use they're carcinogenic."
Such criticism cuts little ice with Polish businessmen such as Krystztof Baczek, 32, bricklayer turned gnome magnate. The owner of Westimex now produces 5,000 gnomes a month. The firm, started with £800 of capital, is now worth £3.4 million.
Sitting in his luxurious red-brick house in Nowa Sol, Poland's "gnome capital", he agrees only that the goods are cheap. "It's true, our gnomes are of a lower quality, but the German consumer doesn't seem to care when the price is so much less," he said.
In his factory, which stinks of a headache-inducing resin, are 400 dungaree-clad moles pushing wheelbarrows, a job lot for a German discount supermarket which will retail at £5. "Frankly you'd have to be a bit stupid to spend much on a garden gnome anyway," said Mr Baczek. German equivalents cost up to £26.
Germans fear that the bloody battle fought and won by Poland in their back gardens is just the beginning. From its tabloids to its more august broadsheets, from cabaret halls to political chatshows, Germany media outlets are awash with stories of how Polish cheap labour is to flood the country's already recession-hit economy.
They tell tales of German companies moving eastwards to take advantage of the lower employment costs and cheaper raw materials. There have even been stories of Germans suffering long-term unemployment turning up in Poland, taking jobs in hospitals and petrol stations.
They point to Poland's huge reserves of labour. With 38 million people it will become the sixth largest member of the EU on May 1.
There are other fears too. Poland is already doing a roaring trade in amphetamines and ecstasy tablets, earning it the status of Europe's second biggest supplier after the Netherlands.
Yet German fears are mirrored by Poles equally worried about what the EU will bring to them.
Last week in the town of Zaluski, a 45-minute drive from Warsaw, a handful of the country's two million farmers were being instructed on how to get the most out of the EU's programme of agricultural subsidies.
In a room filled with stocky farmers and their well-coiffured wives, an official was explaining the need to modernise farming practices. But the participants were clearly very anxious about the forthcoming changes.
They have until June to apply for subsidies which will entitle them to around 200 zlotys (£30) per hectare per year, a quarter of the amount which British and other western farmers are entitled to.
It is not a level playing field. Already millions of tons of French and German grain and meat have been dumped on the Polish market, crippling sections of the food industry. The imbalance will continue under a quota system, forcing Polish farmers to produce less than the country needs and so making imports inevitable.
"It's black magic to me," said elegantly dressed Barbara Wawrzankiewiz, 40, who farms 12 hectares (30 acres) with her husband Jan. "To start with I'll have to open a bank account."
In the meantime there are worries, probably well-grounded given experience among previous new entrants to the EU, that foreign businesses will launch a buying spree.
"People are fearful that Polish businesses will be take over by other Europeans and they won't get a look in," said Szymon Gutkowski, 34, one of the managing partners of the Polish marketing group DDB Warsawa.
There are already many examples. The electricity industry was recently taken over by a German company and a German-owned tabloid newspaper last month knocked the country's highbrow Gazeta Wyborcza from the top-selling slot for the first time since the collapse of communism.
But what rankles with the proud Poles more than anything is perhaps the state of the vodka industry. In just a few years 90 per cent of the business has ended up in foreign hands; companies such as Pernod Ricard are now repackaging age-old brands such as Wyborowa and selling them to the Poles as a trendy new beverage, at greatly inflated prices.
"Vodka was until recently perceived as a drunkard's drink and Poles as a nation of garlic-eating peasants," said Kai Schoenhals, a Polish-American who, with his film actress wife, has opened Poland's first vodka bar, Sense, in central Warsaw. Its regulars include Roman Polanski, the film director.
Compared to the concern for businesses, Polish workers have far less to fear. They are extremely cheap by west European standards.
According to the so-called Big Mac Index, a measure of earning power, the average Pole has to work for 50 minutes to buy a Big Mac compared to 15 in Ireland. Experts suggest that it may take 30 years to erode the economic advantage of low wages as living standards are dragged up by the effects of EU membership. Such low costs are already a magnet for foreign businesses which are paying ever better wages to Poles.
That has created a consumer boom which makes the country utterly unrecognisable from the dour days of communism and shortages.
A trip to one of the huge number of state-of-the-art shopping malls that seem to be springing up every week illustrates the attraction of the consumer deal the Poles now have. The stores, open all day, every day, with their wide aisles are often better stocked than British supermarkets.
In Tesco, the biggest supermarket chain in Poland, care has been taken to label many items Polski Produkt, appealing to the Poles' feisty determination to remember who they are, especially when under the yoke of the EU.
And despite some resistance to the foreign takeovers, the truth is that for the average Pole competition has already brought more choice and more jobs.
"The days when life for Poles consisted of jars of cucumbers, alcohol abuse and deep depression are over," says a diplomat.
"Of course a former Solidarity activist might feel like he'd been compromised, but not your young average Pole who wants to pick up a coffee from Starbucks on the way to work and go to Ikea at the weekend."
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