Jan Smutek

The main purpose of this paper is to present areas and directions of integration and disintegration in East-Central Europe. It is based on the comparison of the two development strategies for the two supraregional areas in Poland namely: Western Poland and Eastern Poland. Supraregions are groups of highest administrative units in Poland – voivodeships. It is not any kind of administrative unit, and neither statistical. The reason for supraregional strategies are common challenges of development of groups of voivodeships. In our analysis we present differences between those strategies in scope of cross-border cooperation. We concentrate on four thematic issues: transport connections, economy, academia and a role of foreign institutions in a preparation and a modification of documents. In this way, we confirm that in the East-Central Europe are existing areas of integration and disintegration reflecting also long lasting division of Europe into West and East. We stress that those disintegration areas, mostly the eastern frontier of the European Union, are the result of state policies.

The article attempts to explore the relationship between the level of spatial deconcentration and the level of spatial inequality in the budgets of communes found within the boundaries of functional areas of large cities in Poland. The study was conducted for twelve major cities indentified in The N ational Spatial Development Plan for 2030. C ities included in the survey are : Warsaw, C racow, Tricity ( Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia ), Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Szczecin, Lublin, Rzeszów, Białystok, Bydgoszcz and Toruń. The study covers the period from 2001 to 2010. The analysis was conducted at the commune level and concerned different categories of commune revenues and expenditures. The level of spatial concentration was measured by using two indicators : standard distance and the Gini index calculated in relation to the area of communes. Spatial inequality was measured by the Gini index in relation to the number of inhabitants. A correlation has been identified for the following categories : current expenditures, expenditures on transportation and communication, health expenditures, personal income tax appropriated for communes, and various subsidies from the national budget. The research results confirm the influence of the spatial deconcentration of commune budgets at the level of spatial inequality. However, this is true only for selected budget categories, while no clear relationships were noted for other categories. The analysis of the above mentioned relationships shows significant differentiation in the types of impact of spatial deconcentration on the level of inequality between communes within functional areas.