Abstract:

The construction of a modern crisis management system in Poland, allowing the activities of all public administration entities and other entities included in the state rescue structures, to be co-ordinated, was started after the flood in July 1997. This cataclysm revealed the weakness of both the rescue structures and the entire rescue system and in fact the lack of it. The old structures turned out to be ineffective in new, democratic and local government solutions and in the new economic reality. It became an impulse to work on the creation of modern legal regulations creating a crisis management system.

The establishment of the Government Centre for Security (RCB) was a significant element in building an effective and comprehensive crisis management system in Poland. For the first time in Poland, a supra-ministerial structure was established, the aim of which was to optimise and standardise the perception of threats by individual ministries and thus to increase the level of ability to cope with difficult situations by the competent services and public administration bodies.