BZB no. 30 - With or without Union. Polish environmental NGOs'attitude towards European integration
The accession will have a profound direct and indirect impact on the state of environment in Poland, however the final, overall effects are difficult to assess. In order to fully and objectively evaluate the positive and negative consequences of accession, the wide public participation in the process is indispensable. The non-governmental organisations dealing with the environmental issues, as the representatives of the general public and due to their "pro-environmental" approach, have a very important role to play in the process of Polish accession to the European Union. In order to find the answers to such questions as whether the accession will have a positive or negative impact on the environment, and what is the opinion of NGOs on the process of integration, this social survey was conducted.
The number of ecological non-governmental organisations in Poland is estimated at approximately 700. It is more difficult to estimate the number of people involved in their activity due to the fact that some of the NGOs consist of just few members while the most numerous organisation - Polish Ecological Club of about 4000 members (Gliński 1996). Because of the diversification of the ecological organisations, according to different fields of interest, number of members and their backgrounds, area coverage, resources, manpower, access to information, etc., as well as fast turnover of members and leaders, conducting the typical social survey and finding a representative sample within this group is almost impossible and moreover - probably pointless.
In this survey different approach was chosen. The people which answered the questionnaire were treated as environmental experts presenting their opinion on positive and negative sides of European integration. As it was mentioned in the letter attached to the questionnaires, the respondents' answers do not necessary have to reflect the official opinion of the NGOs, because usually organisations have not yet elaborated an official statement on their attitude towards European integration. Although, most of the questionnaires were filled out by the chairman, presidents or vice-chairmen/presidents of the organisations and it can be assumed that the opinion of these people will have a significant influence on the official opinion of their organisations, the quantitative results of the survey should be seen as a quite inaccurate approximation due to reasons mentioned above.
The questionnaires were sent to almost 150 NGOs - by regular mail or by electronic mail. These organisations were chosen based on personal knowledge of the surveyor who has been for a long time an active participant of the green movement. According to that knowledge the most dynamic organisations, actively participating in the in the life of environmental movement were chosen. Thirty-one of the questionnaires were returned and additionally 10 were filled out after personal contacts with different NGO's leaders from Szczecin, Stargard, Warsaw and Cracow. The research is therefore based on total number of 41 questionnaires. The survey took place from 10 of May 1998 till the beginning of June 1998.
The personal involvement of the surveyor in the NGOs activity might lead to obtaining slightly biased results (the surveyed group could give answers which were in their opinion, expected by the surveyor), but it is usually unavoidable. The variety of answers suggests also that the effect was not significant.
The questionnaire was divided in four parts. The first part is devoted to short characteristics of the organisations to which the surveyed person belongs, second - to different specific and general questions related to the European integration, third deals with the knowledge on the EU and fourth gives the surveyed an opportunity to choose a various scenario of the development of Europe.