Performance of Polish regional airports after accessing the European Union: Does liberalisation impact on airports' efficiency?

• Two-stage PCA–DEA is used to compare financial and technical efficiency of 4 Polish airports prior and after EU accession.
• Reference group comprised 11 German airports, which represented a mature market in the period 2000–2010.
• Joining EU had a positive impact only on the financial productivity of airports in the first-stage analysis.
• Second-stage analysis confirmed a positive relationship between accession to EU and both efficiencies.

The accession of Poland and nine other countries into the structures of the European Union in May 2004 resulted in their airspaces being covered by the Open Skies agreement. Deregulation and the entry of low cost carriers into these markets contributed to a dynamic growth in air traffic, which most strongly influenced the operations and development of regional airports. In order to determine the impact of EU accession and the Open Skies agreement on the productivity of airports, the performance of four Polish regional airports was analysed and compared during the periods 2000–2004 and 2005–2010, using the two-stage PCA–DEA method. The aim of this paper is also an attempt to address adequate variables for the two-stage DEA. The reference group comprised 11 German airports, which represented a similar but mature market.