The structure of international trade in today’s global economy is undergoing transformation. The increase in the importance of services is a clear trend. In Polish foreign trade with the European Union countries, it is transport services that to the greatest extent create the trade surplus. These services significantly affect the environment, which makes it necessary to take measures aimed at the implementation of the green transport principles. The aim of the study was to provide a detailed description of transport services in Polish foreign trade with European Union (EU) countries and to assess the role of these services in Polish economy, including in terms of sustainable development. The study concerned transport services, consisting of four separate types: maritime transport, air transport, other transport services (except maritime and air) and postal and courier services. The time span of the study was 2010–2018. The latest secondary data from the official statistics of the National Bank of Poland and the Central Statistical Office were used for the purpose of the analysis. The research methods included: critical analysis of the source literature, analysis of secondary data (desk-research) and graphic methods (tables and diagrams), by means of which the results of the study were presented. The conclusions drawn are inductive and deductive in nature. The article describes in detail Polish trade in transport services with EU countries. It focuses on export, import and balance. The role of the examined services in foreign trade and Polish economy was assessed based on the analysis of the structure of export and import and the rate of export and import, geographical orientation of trade, as well as the activity of enterprises from the transport service sector, registered in Poland, including joint ventures. Research has shown that between 2010 and 2018 Polish export and import of transport services as part of trade relations with EU countries increased considerably. The conducted research indicates that transport services are a crucial element of Polish trade. The role of EU countries in the Polish trade in transport services was recognised as significant and growing. This has a positive impact on the country’s economy. The increasing role of road transport in the structure of the Polish trade indicates that Polish entities providing transport services are thriving in this demanding market. However, the analysis of the source literature indicated changes in the preferences of consumers, who increasingly often expect the implementation of sustainable development principles in the distribution of goods. Green marketing or green transport are concepts more and more frequently used to gain competitive advantage in the market. The transport sector in Poland is facing a major trend towards the implementation of sustainable development principles. In order to maintain sales growth internationally, the entities will have to implement sustainable development principles.

This study aimed to assess the opinion of the inhabitants of protected areas in the Polish-German borderland on the development of tourism using the concept of sustainable tourism. It was examined whether the type of protected area and the country of residence were determinants of sustainable tourism development. In 2019-2020, a questionnaire survey was conducted among residents near 14 protected areas in the Pomerania Euroregion. Multinomial and ordinal logit models were used in the data analysis. The main limitations of the survey were the inability to refer to similar surveys from previous years and for other protected areas in Poland and Germany. This prevented a complete spatial-temporal analysis. The study carried out on the acceptance by inhabitants of the neighbourhood of protected areas in the Pomerania Euroregion is unique. The Polish protected regions of the Pomerania Euroregion were shown to have more significant potential for sustainable tourism development than the German ones. The results also show some differences in the perception of tourism by the Poles and the Germans.

Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego we Wrocławiu = Research Papers of Wrocław University of Economics; 2019; vol. 63, nr 6, s. 75-85

The article presents results of the first phase of the project CCI: Circular Economy and Place, which identified challenges and problems in the process of developing and implementing an economy model in the Baltic Sea Region that meets the assumptions of the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan. The comparison of project's original assumptions with the identified conditions made its authors realise the need to restructure methods and ways of action (in the second phase), making the prospect of achieving the fundamental goal more realistic: reducing the gap in the ability to run a circular economy in the peripheral Baltic Sea Region compared to the centre of the European Union. The desirability of analysing the conclusions formulated after the first phase of the project is justified by the importance of macroregional conditions in processes of the EU mechanisms implementation, which are supposed to be identical for all parts of the European Union.