Kronenburg Estates S.L.

Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 km², and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With a population of approximately 38.5 million people, Poland is the sixth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin.

Poland is a developed market and regional power. It has the eighth largest and one of the most dynamic economies in the European Union, simultaneously achieving a very high rank on the Human Development Index. Additionally, the Polish Stock Exchange in Warsaw is the largest and most important in Central Europe. Poland is a developed and democratic country, which maintains a high-income economy along with very high standards of living, life quality, safety, education and economic freedom. Poland has a developed school educational system. The country provides free university education, state-funded social security and a universal health care system for all citizens. Poland has 15 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 14 of which are cultural. Poland is a member state of the European Union, the Schengen Area, the United Nations, NATO, the OECD, the Three Seas Initiative, and the Visegrád Group.

Geography

Poland's territory extends across several geographical regions, between latitudes 49° and 55° N, and longitudes 14° and 25° E. In the north-west is the Baltic seacoast, which extends from the Bay of Pomerania to the Gulf of Gdańsk. This coast is marked by several spits, coastal lakes (former bays that have been cut off from the sea), and dunes. The largely straight coastline is indented by the Szczecin Lagoon, the Bay of Puck, and the Vistula Lagoon.

The centre and parts of the north of the country lie within the North European Plain. Rising above these lowlands is a geographical region comprising four hilly districts of moraines and moraine-dammed lakes formed during and after the Pleistocene ice age. These lake districts are the Pomeranian Lake District, the Greater Polish Lake District, the Kashubian Lake District, and the Masurian Lake District. The Masurian Lake District is the largest of the four and covers much of north-eastern Poland. The lake districts form part of the Baltic Ridge, a series of moraine belts along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea.

South of the Northern European Plain are the regions of Lusatia, Silesia and Masovia, which are marked by broad ice-age river valleys. Farther south is a mountainous region, including the Sudetes, the Kraków-Częstochowa Uplands, the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, and the Carpathian Mountains, including the Beskids. The highest part of the Carpathians is the Tatra Mountains, along Poland's southern border.

Climate

The climate is mostly temperate throughout the country. The climate is oceanic in the north and west and becomes gradually warmer and continental towards the south and east. Summers are generally warm, with average temperatures between 18 and 30 °C depending on the region. Winters are rather cold, with average temperatures around 3 °Cin the northwest and −6 °C in the northeast. Precipitation falls throughout the year, although, especially in the east, winter is drier than summer.

The warmest region in Poland is Lower Silesia in the southwest of the country, where temperatures in the summer average between 24 and 32 °C but can go as high as 34 to 39 °C on some days in the warmest months of July and August. The warmest cities in Poland are Tarnów in Lesser Poland, and Wrocław in Lower Silesia. The average temperatures in Wrocław are 20 °C in the summer and 0 °C in the winter, but Tarnów has the longest summer in all of Poland, which lasts for 115 days, from mid-May to mid-September. The coldest region of Poland is in the northeast in the Podlaskie Voivodeship near the borders with Belarus and Lithuania. Usually the coldest city is Suwałki. The climate is affected by cold fronts which come from Scandinavia and Siberia. The average temperature in the winter in Podlaskie ranges from −6 to −4 °C. The biggest impact of the oceanic climate is observed in Świnoujście and Baltic Sea seashore area from Police to Słupsk.

Demographics

Poland, with its 38,544,513 inhabitants, has the eighth-largest population in Europe and the sixth-largest in the European Union. It has a population density of 122 inhabitants per square kilometer.

In recent years, Poland's population has decreased due to an increase in emigration and a decline in the birth rate. Since Poland's accession to the European Union on 1 May 2004, a significant number of Poles have emigrated, primarily to the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland in search of better work opportunities abroad. With better economic conditions and Polish salaries at 70% of the EU average in 2016, this trend started to decrease in the 2010s and workforce became needed in the country.

As a result, the Polish Minister of Development Mateusz Morawiecki suggested that Poles abroad should return to Poland. Polish minorities are still present in the neighboring countries of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, as well as in other countries. Altogether, the number of ethnic Poles living abroad is estimated to be around 20 million. The largest number of Polonia can be found in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom and Canada.

The total fertility rate (TFR) in Poland was estimated in 2013 at 1.33 children born to a woman.

Languages

Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is a Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and the native language of Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages. Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the official languages of the European Union.

Until recent decades Russian was commonly learned as a second language, but after the Revolutions of 1989 has been replaced by English as the most common second language studied and spoken. In 2015, more than 50% of Poles declared to speak English – Russian came second and German came third, other commonly spoken foreign languages include French, Italian and Spanish.

According to the Act of 6 January 2005 on national and ethnic minorities and on the regional languages, 16 other languages have officially recognized status of minority languages: 1 regional language (Kashubian - spoken by around 366,000 people, but only 108,000 declared its everyday use in the census of 2011), 10 languages of 9 national minorities (minority groups that have their own independent state elsewhere) and 5 languages of 4 ethnic minorities (spoken by the members of minorities not having a separate state elsewhere). Jewish and Romani minorities each have 2 minority languages recognized.

Languages having the status of national minority's language are Armenian, Belarusian, Czech, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Russian, Slovak and Ukrainian. Languages having the status of ethnic minority's language are Karaim, Rusyn (called Lemko in Poland) and Tatar. Also, official recognition is granted to two Romani languages: Polska Roma and Bergitka Roma.

Official recognition of a language provides certain rights (under conditions prescribed by the law): of education in that language, of having the language established as the secondary administrative language or help language in bilingual municipalities and of financial support from the state for the promotion of that language.

Religion

Religious tolerance in Poland spurred many theological movements such as Calvinist Polish Brethren and a number of other Protestant groups, as well as atheists, such as ex-Jesuit philosopher Kazimierz Łyszczyński, one of the first atheist thinkers in Europe. Also, in the 16th century, Anabaptists from the Netherlands and Germany settled in Poland—after being persecuted in Western Europe—and became known as the Vistula delta Mennonites.

In 2014, an estimated 87% of the population belonged to the Catholic Church. Though rates of religious observance are lower at 52%, Poland remains one of the most religious countries in Europe. Contemporary religious minorities include Polish Orthodox (about 506,800), various Protestants (about 150,000) — including 77,500 Lutherans in the Evangelical-Augsburg Church, 23,000 Pentecostals in the Pentecostal Church in Poland, 10,000 Adventists in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and other smaller Evangelical denominations — Jehovah's Witnesses (126,827), Eastern Catholics, Mariavites, Jews, and Muslims, including the Tatars of Białystok region. There are also several thousand neopagans, some of whom are members of the Native Polish Church.