The privatization of public tasks and ownership transformation in Poland – the outline of the issue

The following paper focuses on the discussion on the two issues – the privatization as the transfer of ownership rights to the public wealth onto a private entity and the privatization of public tasks as the manifestation of the deviation of public law entities to perform tasks for the benefit of private entities. The two institutions cause a lot of interest. The two concepts are very often used as synonyms thus interfering with the proper perception of the changes carried out in the economy. The reasons for this state of affairs may be sought in at least two aspects, firstly, the all the action performed by the state regarding the “public” property are in the area of common interest. The more the disposition of the property – the forfeiting of the ownership right for the benefit of a private entity – tends to be “on the carpet”. Furthermore, the emotions are aroused when it comes to the public and private collaboration due to the fear of the allegation of corruption. On the other hand, the unawareness and improper understanding of the meaning of both concepts leads to the erroneous perception of the institutions which play a significant however different roles of each in the state. It should be emphasized that between the concepts of „privatization as the ownership transformation” and „privatization of public tasks” may not be put an equals sign. The political, economic and social changes taking place cause adequate changes to the public administration. Thus the roles and duties are also changed which manifests in e.g. enabling the engagement of the public sector in the cooperation with a private partner (as in private and public partnership for example). The aim of the paper is to indicate the elements defining the objective institutions, factors allowing to distinguish the regulations and primarily allowing to answer the question why the two concepts may not be treated as identical. To explain the aforementioned I shall use a few methods – firstly to explain the concept of “privatization”, “privatization of public tasks” I shall use the historical method. Then to indicate the possibility of the performance of the public tasks in the EU law I shall use the comparative method. The following method used to discuss the objective issue is the analytical method – the aim of the two regulation will be analyzed in order to clarify the inability to consider the privatization process as the model for public and private collaboration.