Two very interesting articles here and here on Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

In a lengthy interview, Tusk says his government's ambition is great: to complete the transformation to a free-market system begun almost two decades ago. The disastrous legacies of 45 years of communist rule — from a bloated bureaucracy to punishing unemployment — have yet to be cleared away, he says, and Poland cannot afford to waste more time. "We have no oil and gas," he says. "We don't have high tech. Our centers of development, are far, far behind others. We will never be an extraordinary tourist attraction. Poland is quite a mediocre country in some regards. The only natural resource that we have, and with which we can compete, is freedom."

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Tusk says he wants to shrink government, curb central authority, "radically" deregulate, and cut taxes.

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In the mid '80s, Tusk and a group of other Solidarity intellectuals began publishing an underground monthly pamphlet featuring the writings of the liberal economist Friedrich Hayek and essays on private property. Their heroes were Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "We had to wait many, many years for our way of thinking to be accepted in Poland," Tusk says. "But now it has been. And we are ready."