The Polish media are reporting that Polish local government employees dealing with applications for EU funds are quitting their jobs to join the private sector, where pay is much higher.

No surprise. The Polish Development Minister told me a while ago that the greatest problem Poland faced in spending its EU largesse was ‘people’.

Poland not surprisingly finds it hard to mobilise and train the army of officials across the country needed to pick their way nimbly through the voluminous EU (and Polish) processes needed to get EU funds sent to (and spent sensibly in) Poland. And indeed we see a tendency for firms pitching for EU contracts to nab anyone in government who is any good at all this, since contracts can be large and anyone who understands both EU and Polish procedure is a highly valuable asset.

So, Poland will battle to spend all the EU funds available to it in the current Budget cycle. The basic sequence goes something like this:

  • government agrees overall balance as between central and regional discretion in spending and priority sectors
  • national/regional development plans are prepared
  • project ideas emerge
  • specific tenders are drawn up
  • bids come in and are examined against financial/environmental and other criteria
  • bidders win (or lose) – maybe rows and appeals break out
  • specific contracts are then prepared
  • work starts
  • and is completed – checks needed that the job has been done properly
  • with plenty of paperwork and checks still needed for the Brussels cheques to arrive once the work is nicely completed

Uuurgh.

Huge scope at each stage for delay and muddle, even with good intentions and reasonable people all round.

That said, the fact that Poland has not spent much of its EU funding so far is no surprise – in the nature of the process the big spending comes at the end of the Budget period (ie in a few years’ time) once all those steps have been completed.

Or is all this money in fact a resource curse anyway? Funding which is so hard to access that it skews national efforts in an unhealthy direction?