The portal OdpowiedzialnyPoznan.pl has determined that the government decided to restrict access to EU funds from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for a large portion of potential beneficiaries. How? There was a lack of adequate project communication, as a result of which information about the grants did not reach many of those interested in obtaining the funds.
Information About Potential Grants Not for Everyone
The Poznań-based portal reports that the disparity in knowledge about the program is noticeable in Facebook groups, where posts can still be found from entrepreneurs (those aware of the grants and how they were being distributed) offering to buy companies from the HoReCa sector from owners who were unaware of the benefits of successfully applying for funding. Szymon Woźniak, the article’s author, adds that this was the result of specific decisions made by those in power.
According to the text, on April 16, 2024, the Poznań Regional Office of the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP) planned to organize a conference for the HoReCa sector. The author writes that five employees had been involved in preparing the event for nearly a month.
“The event was originally planned to focus on the circular economy. However, as the date approached, the prospect of supporting the HoReCa sector with funds from the National Recovery Plan (KPO) became increasingly realistic. The event prepared by PARP could therefore have served as an excellent platform for providing entrepreneurs with information about the new fund. We are talking about a wide group of entrepreneurs here, the Poznań office’s reach covers one-fourth of Poland, including not only the Greater Poland region but also the Kuyavian-Pomeranian, West Pomeranian, Pomeranian, and Lubusz voivodeships,”
one can read.
The organizers expanded the conference agenda to include a panel dedicated to the KPO. Eventually, the day came when the official call for funding applications for the HoReCa sector under the KPO was announced. This gave the panel greater importance and was expected to attract more entrepreneurs.
“We had the mailing list, we were ready to send the invitations, everything was prepared down to the last detail, just a matter of hitting ‘Enter.’ Suddenly, an alarm: a phone call from Warsaw, don’t do it, because the ministry does not allow the invitations to be sent. A month of work for the whole team went down the drain,”
reads Woźniak’s text, citing an informant.
Do Not Promote the KPO!
The author further writes that, according to his findings, clear instructions came from the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy not to promote the KPO and to leave that to the project operators.
“The organizers were ordered to cancel the entire event, the very same one that the whole team had been working on for a month, with its agenda regularly and thoroughly consulted with headquarters in Warsaw,”
according to OdpowiedzialnyPoznan.pl.
Recently, Minister Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz dismissed Katarzyna Duber-Stachurska from her position as President of the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP). In response to her dismissal, Duber-Stachurska noted in a LinkedIn post that the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy is fully responsible for the program.
The article’s author stresses that entrepreneurs could have expected more from PARP, certainly better communication about the project. As a result, no information was provided at all.