European Funds for the years 2014 – 2020 for Poland agreed

Will we use this (last) chance properly?

A success!
After several months of preparations, consultations and agreeing thousands of pages of the text, the European Commission approved all 22 operational programs addressed to Poland. Ministerial and self-government clerks were relieved that their work finished with a success. There are planned expenditures of 82.5 billion Euro for the active regional development policy, sometimes also called the cohesion policy or the structural policy. This amounts to over 23% of the total sum of 351 billion Euro allocated for the regional policy of all 28 EU member states in the budged for the years 2014 – 2020.
These over 80 billion do not include two other programs planned for Poland: rural development and maritime and fisheries development. The value of them is 13.5 and 0.5 billion Euro, respectively.
Negotiations with the EU were activities not observed by the majority of the society. They required reading and understanding numerous new requirements developed in Brussels, agreeing many national, regional and local strategies and development programs with the current strategy of the EU development strategy – „Europe 2020”, arduous negotiations with the European Commission and answering hundreds of details questions, etc. We must note that Poland was one of the first countries in which programs were prepared and presented to community officials in the first half of 2014.
We warmly thank all engaged persons for this achievement in the form of approved operational programs. You did it and we are very glad! But this just could have not been a failure. Sums for each country were set much earlier within the scope of the Partnership Agreement. And this was just, or maybe as much as, the matter to agree them, however, with much effort.
The tank is refilled
The majority of funds are devoted to the infrastructure and environment program, the priorities of which include: lowemission economy, environment protection, development of technical infrastructure all over Poland and energetic safety. The second budget is devoted to the Intelligent Development program – new and the most essential program for supporting innovations in Poland. Within its scope, covering whole Poland, companies should mainly search for possibilities of using the support of developing own business projects, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The Knowledge, Education, Development program is focused on improving the policy and public activity in aid of the employment market, education and the whole economy, promotion of social innovations and international cooperation.
Digital Poland is the program aimed at increasing the access to the Internet, development of a citizen friendly e-administration and social popularisation of knowledge and skills of computer operation.
Eastern Poland program is a beyond regional program aimed at an increase of competitiveness and innovativeness of the Eastern Poland macroregion by supporting the innovativeness and the development of research and increasing the investing attractiveness of this macroregion, especially through a transportship availability. The program covers 5 voivodships: Warmińsko-Mazurskie, Podlaskie, Lubelskie, Świętokrzyskie and Podkarpackie.
Technical Support is to provide efficient operation of institutions engaged in the funds implementation, as well as the development of an effective system of information and promotion of European funds. This program is addressed mainly to the public administration. Additionally, projects of regional development realised with foreign partners are to be co-financed from the programs of the European Territorial Co-operation.
Apart from the above mentioned activities planned for the whole country, there are also regional operational programs, managed by the Offices of the Marshal in each region. These are the most programs for SMEs apart from the Intelligent Development and Eastern Poland programs. Each region has planned activities supporting the development of enterprises’ innovativeness.

Various shades of innovativeness
Reading brief descriptions of particular operational program allows us to see what is the main subject, aim and mean within the current EU budget for the years 2014 – 2020 – innovativeness.
The growth and development of innovativeness should be visible in most of activities, especially in projects externally funding the development of enterprises.
Let’s start
We already started realisation of these programs officially. First tenders are already announced. Some politicians outstrip one another to give prompt dates of announcements of next tenders. But this is a strenuous and time-consuming process, which should be prepared without any flaws and in a different way than in the previous period (2007-2013).
Let us expect that the first tenders will be launched by the end of the second quarter of 2015.
Let’s learn from our mistakes
There is a hope that mistakes made in the previous period will not be repeated. It would be a shame if Poland did not use these funds to obtain bases for a long-term growth after 2020. Discussions in the European Union suggest that this is probably the last term within which such large sums are spent on the structural policy. This would probably mean that Poland is not to be granted another such high amount of resources for a support of our country.
If such scenario was to be realised, we should focus on the quality of selected projects.
Let us support activities planned in operational programs which offer bases of a growth after a disconnection from the
EU budget drip in 2023, i.e. the moment when Euro from the current EU financing is to be completed.
Such change will, of course, reflect in the pace of spending the European money. We should be done with fast expenditures of funds on everything. We have already proven that we can spend them fast.
Let us show that we can also spend them effectively and wisely. We should focus on wise and future-oriented expenditures. The support should be given only to those projects which can develop the base ground for a considered functioning and development of modern economy and society. We should limit expenditures on projects which are known examples of spending funds on flamboyant aims, such as regional airports in each voivodship, aqua parks „in each poviat”, science and technology parks simply renting office space or too large noise barriers at motorways, etc, etc.
It is obligatory to introduce another change of the practical use of the public procurement law.
Last amendments aimed at eliminating the criterion of price as the sole argument were bypassed by a major part of orderers using a clever contrivance. There appeared a second criterion – the realisation term. This makes that the obligation to use several criterions is fulfilled, while the most important thing is still the price. And the lowest price, most often mean the lowest quality of products or services.
Last chance of this scale
The current EU budget is the most essential chance to put our economy to right tracks and to make it faster, going into the future without the EU aid. This is probably the last chance. Let’s not waste it.

Przeczytaj ten artykuł w wersji polskiej:  http://www.businessmantoday.org/uzgodniono-fundu…-2020-dla-polski/

Zapisz