The Impact of Global Economic Crisis on the Functioning of Special Economic Zones in Poland

The article attempts to determine the impact exerted by the global economic crisis on the efficiency of selected Special Economic Zones (SEZ) functioning in Poland. The research covered four SEZ functioning in Polish northern and north-southern macro-regions (NTS 1). The article analyses changes in such dimensions as e.g. the number of valid permits to perform economic activities in the discussed zones, investment expenditure incurred by entrepreneurs or employment size. The study covered the period 2005–2015. The conducted research allowed concluding that the phenomena related to global downturn, even though somewhat delayed, were present in the aforementioned zones. More serious symptoms could have been observed in 2008, whereas the years 2009–2012 turned out to be the critical ones. As it seems, starting from 2013 certain symptoms of the situation improvement could be observed, predominantly within the scope of investment expenditure incurred by businesses.