Polen krijgt last van stagnerende economie

With his fondness for tea in china cups and upper-class English accent, British-born Jacek Rostowski projects an air of cultivated calm, but the economic slowdown has put his job as Poland's finance minister in the balance.

Rostowski, an admirer of ex-British leader Margaret Thatcher, has overseen one of Europe's few economic success stories. When its neighbors were in recession, Poland grew robustly for most of the past six years, and stuck to tough fiscal discipline.

Now its economy, the biggest in central Europe, has slowed and much more sharply than Rostowski had expected, leaving him struggling to balance the budget.