News
European Funding Opportunities in Poland
With Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004 came a huge package of European funding. Structural and Cohesion Programmes worth a total of 67bn EUROs are running in the period up to 2013, addressing the country’s development needs across a range of areas from large capital projects to helping unemployed people into work.
The total number of applications submitted for the EU funding was 106,300. In 2009 alone, the EU funds expenditure plan was completed in 101% and PLN 16.9 billion were spent.
In 2010, Poland plans to utilise PLN 29 billion. Only by 31 January 2010, more than 28 thousand of financing contracts for the total amount of admissible expenses of PLN 111 billion including PLN 78.2 billion of EU subsidies were signed.
As a EU company you could potentially plug into these opportunities in two main ways:
• As a direct applicant – Most of Poland’s EU funding programmes list enterprises among the types of organisation that can apply for funding. Companies applying for funds must be registered in Poland, so a you might for example consider opening a branch office, setting up a subsidiary or entering into a joint venture with a Polish partner.
• By supplying goods or services to organisations that have been awarded grant to run projects. Public sector tenders are regulated according to EU procurement thresholds and tenders in certain value categories must be advertised through open procedures on official EU and Polish government websites.
National Operational Programmes
The Ministry for Regional Development has announced two draft operational programmes for the years up to 2013, "Infrastructure and the Environment" and "Human Resources". Their combined cost is to be €35bn, with €28bn to come from EU funds. The Infrastructure and the Environment Operational Programme is to make Poland and its regions more attractive for investment by developing the technical infrastructure. The overall cost of the programme is more than €26bn, of which over €21bn is from the EU, nearly €4bn from domestic funds, and €1bn will come from private funds.
Within the Infrastructure and the Environment Operational Programme, funding is available for:
- Water management and wastewater treatment (€2.941bn)
- Waste disposal and protection of the land surface (€1.176bn)
- Flood control (€588m)
- Projects adapting enterprises to environmental protection requirements (€250m)
- Nature conservancy and fostering ecological awareness (€105m)
- Trans-European transport networks TEN-T (€8.905bn)
- Environmentally Friendly Transport (€7.241bn)
- Safe transport and transport networks (€1.068bn)
- Road infrastructure in Eastern Poland (€1.176 bn)
- Environmentally friendly energy infrastructure (€982m)
- Energy security (€802m)
- Culture and cultural heritage (€411m)
- Medical rescue infrastructure (€176m)
Regional Operational Programmes
There is an allocation of EUR 16.5bn for all 16 ROPs. Areas of support and types of projects are listed below:
R&D, innovation and entrepreneurship (23.5%)
Types of projects eligible for support:
- Direct investments in enterprises
- Establishment and development of external financing instruments for enterprises
- Operations of business support institutions
- Ecological projects in enterprises
- Support for R&D projects
Transport (26.6%)
Types of projects eligible for support:
- Investments in roads infrastructure (regional, county and local roads)
- Construction and redevelopment of the regional rail infrastructure and purchase or modernisation of railway rolling stock
- Public transport projects
- Construction and redevelopment of the regional airports infrastructure
- Redevelopment and modernisation of the harbour infrastructure
- Investments improving conditions for the regional and local inland navigation
- Development of multimodal transport
- Establishment of the intelligent transport systems (traffic management)
- Construction of bicycle paths
Social infrastructure (11.1%)
Types of projects eligible for support:
- Development of educational establishments including schools, laboratories and computer workrooms
- Support for school libraries including provision of equipment
- Management of the surrounding environment of educational establishments
- Support for projects aimed at development of the healthcare infrastructure in particular repair and modernisation of the healthcare infrastructure and providing establishments with medical equipment for diagnosis and treatment
- Improvement of the quality of educational establishments’ infrastructure
Environmental protection (10.6%)
Types of projects eligible for support:
- Water and waste water management – construction and modernisation of water pipe networks and construction, extension and modernisation of water treatment plants
- Waste management including organisation and implementation of the systems for selective waste collection and recyclin
- Air quality protection – modernisation of the district heating and heating systems
- Projects related to environmental protection
- Projects related to ecological education
- Projects related to environmental monitoring, pollution control and threat prevention
- Regeneration of degraded areas
Information Society (7.8%)
Types of projects eligible for support:
- Establishment of geographical spatial information systems for the regional and local level
- ICT education
- Development of the backbone local and regional broadband network
- Construction, redevelopment and equipping the centres for managing the regional and local networks
- Establishment of public internet access points (PIAPs)Electronic platforms at the local and regional levels
- Public e-services related to education, healthcare, culture, safety and environmental protection
- Support for ICT implementation in enterprises
- Providing a wide access to ICT technologies for enterprises and ensuring their wide usage of ICT technologies
- Establishment of the modern interactive internet information system related to tourism and culture
- Establishment and redevelopment of the systems serving digitalisation of the heritage resources
- E-administration
Regeneration (5.6%)
Energy (3%)
Projects eligible for support:
- Construction of small and medium sized units generating electricity and heat in association
- Projects related to the local and regional infrastructure for transmission and distribution of electrical energy
- Construction of new and modernisation of the existing heat distribution networks
- Thermal insulation of the public utility buildings
- Projects related to renewable energy sources
- Construction and modernisation of power grids which enable the attachment of units generating electricity from the renewable sources
- Investments in production of biofuels which are not agricultural products
- Projects related to the local and regional infrastructure for transmission and distribution of natural gas
