This note has been prepared for the plenary session of the European Forest Week on “Forests and Water” taking place on Thursday, 23 October 2008 1 .

The article makes an attempt to answer the question: how direct payments affected the land market in Poland? The first part of the article explains the theoretical aspects of direct payments as an instrument of agricultural policy and their prospective effectiveness. Also the special character of the solutions adopted by Poland in relation with the use of this instrument was shown.

The basic agricultural structure in Poland consists of small and medium family-owned farmsteads. Public funds grant their support primarily to farmers capable of competing efficiently within the EU market. In most cases, that means farmsteads covering a larger area. It is the real property market that regulates the agrarian structure.

In the research was submitted agricultural land market in Poland, in the political system transformation conditions, with consideration it function, stimulating the structural change of farming including territorial structure.

This Regulation of the Minister of Environment, which is composed of 12 paragraphs and one Annex, lays down: (1) method of making available information on the environment, specified in art.30 of the Environment Protection Act; (2) minimal scope of information made available; (3) form of the information; (3) frequency of making information available.

This paper offers an overview of land reform processes in the CEECs and their outcomes and impacts and analyzes current and emerging structures in rural areas. Different types of land consolidation are defined and their potential impacts are assessed.

EU membership has profound implications for all parts of a country’s economy, as well as for its relationships with the other countries in Europe and its internal political structures. Members of the EU must be democracies governed by the rule of law and which guarantee human rights.

This Regulation of the Minister of the Environment establishes: the list of substances particularly harmful to water environments and causing water pollution; rules on sewage testing; methods of analysis and procedure for verifying if the conditions are fulfilled; conditions which must fulfilled when inserting sewage into water or soil, including maximum permitted values of pollution and condit

Basing on a sample of Polish rural households present paper analyses how different households' and country-specific characteristics affect farmers' decision about renting additional parcel in. An attempt is made to see if local rental markets still have potential that could be further exploited.

The article analyses influences on the design of land rental contracts in Poland. Attention is paid to the effect of both the properties of the transaction as identified in Transaction Cost Economics (asset-specificity, uncertainty, frequency) and the features of the institutional environment (legal as well as customary rules) as studied by the Economics of Property Rights.

Economic aspects of land market in Slovakia were studied in two different regions, characterized by different soil and natural conditions. Two groups of Slovak land owners were analysed. The first group consisted of 412 private farmers with 43.2 ha of agricultural land (LA) per farm on average, the second one of 150 big enterprises such as cooperatives with 1,866 ha of LA on average.

In this paper agricultural land markets are regarded as organisations, which allows to take the effect of the social embeddedness of exchange into account. The markets-as organizations approach suggests that markets are governed by an internal "constitution" containing rules on dissemination of information, control procedures and sanctioning mechanisms that provide advantages to members.