In the opinion of ProKolej Foundation, in the project of the National Rail Programme until 2023, presented for consultations at the end of July, the following six groups of main problems may be distinguished:

• inadequate as compared with the need scale and scope of the programme and ignoring the budget necessary for maintenance works
• too general definition of goals and no link between goals and project lists
• fragmentary indices and monitoring system which is erroneous from the point of view of methodology
• no development projects which would offer new quality of transport nationwide
• inclusion of projects which are overestimated, ineffective and not ready for implementation
• inclusion of descriptive material which makes the analysis of the scope, effectiveness and even geographical identification of investment impossible.

In the present form, the document is a list of tasks and possibly a preliminary cost estimate and not a coherent programme whose goal would be to improve the quality and to solve problems of the railway network in Poland. With such large funds available, the document priority should be effective allocation of investment funds, aimed at a real improvement of rail transport competitiveness and not thoughtless use of EU funds. This is, however, beyond the decision area of the infrastructure manager. Hence, to conclude our opinion, we put forward a suggestion to tighten the supervision of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Construction over the National Rail Programme assumptions and the list of proposals made for execution by the beneficiary, that is PKP PLK S.A. Such a programme should be developed and supervised by a powerful decision-making centre, and not its contractor. Otherwise, the statement presented on page 22 that “despite investment actions, due to negligence observed in previous years, the current technical state and working parameters of the railway infrastructure made available by PLK S.A. do not allow the Government to execute its policy with regard to the rail transportation” will continue to be valid.