Despite the concerted efforts of the German administration in the occupied Łódź region, German-Polish mixed intimate relation-ships persisted. This article analyzes this issue in the context of the German civilian population, particularly ethnic Germans from Łódź, and Poles. During World War II, the occupying forces sought to prevent the formation and legalization of new intimate relationships between ethnic Germans and Poles. They introdu-ced more relaxed divorce laws to facilitate the dissolution of existing marriages. The Deutsche Volksliste (German Peoples’ List, DVL), established in the spring of 1940, played a pivotal role in this policy. Despite internal confusion and dilemmas, many Polish partners and children in ethnically mixed, legalized relationships were allowed limited German citizenship status as Volksdeutsche in the lowest categories. The process of inclusion and exclusion was deeply intertwined during the classification, driven by the necessity to avoid “ethnic confusion” and the potential displeasure of their German partners. The complexity of this ethnic categorization system and the policies governing ethnically mixed relationships became increasingly intri-cate with each passing year of the German occupation of Poland. However, these complexities did not disrupt the stability of the eth-nic hierarchy imposed by the occupiers in Łódź.

In economics we often face a system which intrinsically imposes a structure of hierarchy of its components, i.e., in modeling trade accounts related to foreign exchange or in optimization of regional air protection policy. A problem of reconciliation of forecasts obtained on different levels of hierarchy has been addressed in the statistical and econometric literature many times and concerns bringing together forecasts obtained independently at different levels of hierarchy. This paper deals with this issue with regard to a hierarchical functional time series. We present and critically discuss a state of art and indicate opportunities of an application of these methods to a certain environment protection problem. We critically compare the best predictor known from the literature with our own original proposal. Within the paper we study a macromodel describing the day and night air pollution in Silesia region divided into five subregions.

Maritime economy is one of the fields of economy of coastal states. The article tries to identify the legal framework of environmental maritime economy, as the environmental conditions influence and shape the maritime economy in acontemporary world. Environmental maritime economy is a consequence of coexistenceof three fields of law. Economic law, environmental law and maritime law. Those fields of law, which has been extracted from the body of law in an artificial way by using the objective criteria but still they are deeply interre-lated and the borders between them are blurred. Sustainable development principle is one of the main indicators of how the environmental maritime economy should function. Legal framework, international law, EU law and Polish internal law try to precise the exact meaning of sustainable development in the sphere of economic use of maritime resources. This is specially complicated as the ecosystem of the Baltic Sea is highly vulnerable and lots of environmental pressure is being putted on it. Successful implementation of environmental maritime economy should result in achieving prosperous economic activity that will be taking place in the environment of a good quality.

At the end of August 2012 the Polish Parliament enacted the Act on State Marine Accident Investigation Commission, which regulates its organization and operation. The Act transposed, within its regulation, Directive 2009/18/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 establishing the fundamental principles governing the investigation of accidents in the maritime transport sector and is based on the Code of the International Standards and Recommended Practices for a Safety Investigation into a Marine Casualty or Marine Incident (Casualty Investigation Code), issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) together with amendments to the SOLAS Convention. The purpose of the Directive, as well as the Casualty Investigation Code, is to improve maritime safety and the prevention of pollution by ships by facilitating the expeditious holding of safety investigations and proper analysis of marine casualties and incidents in order to determine their causes. The EU Parliament obliged, through the Directive, the EU Member States to ensure that the safety investigations are conducted under the responsibility of an impartial permanent investigative body, endowed with the necessary powers, and by suitably qualified investigators, competent in matters relating to marine casualties and incidents. This impartial permanent investigative body had been named in Poland: Państwowa Komisja Badania Wypadków Morskich [the State Marine accident Investigation Commission] and began its operation in May 2013 upon the appointment, by the Minister of Transport, Construction and Maritime Economy, of the third one of five statutory members of the Commission. Since the beginning of its activity the Commission has initiated 77 safety investigations, prepared and adopted 272 resolutions, published 53 safety reports and issued more than 30 safety recommendations. The establishment and activity of the Commission leads to greater awareness of casualty causation and has a positive impact on the level of maritime safety.