Structural Funds of the European Union in Poland—Experience of the First Period of Membership

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the results of the first period of taking advantage of Structural Funds in Poland. The analysis refers to realisation of the planned activities in the strategic document which is the National Development Plan 2004–2006, being a base of the new model of the Polish regional policy. The obtained results show the level of success of Structural Funds including the structure being a result of Operational Programmes which are a part of the National Development Plan, and the structure of beneficiaries, among which the listed ones are: units of local governments, businessmen, non-governmental organizations and educational institutions. In each case the analysis includes regional differences of the absorption process which allows us to define the influence of Structural Funds on changes of regional economic development in Poland.

Notes

1. Communes were in operation since 1973, in 1990 a full local government was restored.

2. Update and change in classification of NUTS in Poland after 2000 result from EU regulations specified in Regulation (EC) No. 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) (European Union, 2003) and Regulation (EC) No. 1888/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2005 amending Regulation (EC) No. 1059/2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) by reason of the accession of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia to the European Union (European Union, 2005).

3. Council of Ministers approved Community Support Framework at its sitting on 23 December 2003.

4. For all currency conversion included in the document, the applied € rate is PLN 3.84.

5. Since October 2003 Polish government had been holding negotiations with the European Commission on defining the scope of activities and the budget structure under Operational Programmes and Uniform Programming Documents for the Community Initiative. On the turn of February and March 2003 the European Commission approved Operational Programmes, which enabled Poland to draw a final version of Programme Complements, specifying details of activities to be implemented in compliance with the objectives and budget of Operational Programmes. Programme Complements, pursuant to the procedures in force, do not requuire approval from the European Commission and merely for information purposes were sent to Brussels. European Commission formally approved Community Support Framework with all the executive documents in May 2004 after Poland's accession to the EU.

6. Ministry of Regional Development was created in 2005, previously the Ministry of Economy and Labour has been performing these responsibilities.

7. Given the huge value of contracts implemented on the national level, they have been divided into 16 voivodships and addend to the value of EU financing obtained by NGOs under the regional contracts.