Cooperation with the European Commision

“The Ministry of Environment is in constant touch with the European Commission and the World Bank. The regular meetings are also held according to a set schedule. The next meeting with EC representatives will take place next week. During this meeting, the Minister of Investment and Development Jerzy Kwieciński, who is responsible for the implementation of EU funds for Poland, will talk about the rules for investing funds under the new EU financial perspective,” Minister Kowalczyk pointed out.

“What is more, the claims that EU funds earmarked for this purpose have been withheld are unfounded, since the negotiations on the new EU financial perspective have not yet started. We are going to work out specific financial assumptions soon, together with the representatives,” he added.

Improving efficiency

“The programme is currently undergoing subsequent modification stages. The Ministry is currently focusing on increasing its efficiency. This is why, starting in July, we are including municipalities in the Clean Air programme in a pilot project.

To date, more than 600 local governments have applied to join the programme. “We have declared that the distribution network within the programme will be extended to the European Commission, and that is exactly what we are doing,” said Minister Henryk Kowalczyk.

“The implementation of the pilot project will significantly speed up work carried out under the Clean Air programme and will also allow to estimate the costs of managing the programme covered by local governments,” the Minister added.

The municipalities were involved in the process of verifying and accepting applications. The municipal officials will assist in filling in the applications. They will also take over the day-to-day contact with beneficiaries, who will be able to submit corrections and additional information.  We are carrying out analytical works to check whether it would be possible to involve commercial banks in the implementation of the programme.

In addition, the Ministry of Environment envisions a number of changes simplifying the application and the verification procedure. One of the most important of them will be the presumption that the beneficiary will sign the contract at the time of submission of the application. The contract will be binding after the decision of the Management of the Regional Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management. We expect more than 100,000 applications to be submitted by the end of this year.

We should also point out the tax exemption, which is used now by the beneficiaries carrying out thermal modernisations and replacing their furnaces and boilers. The exact number of beneficiaries of the tax exemption in 2019 will be known at the end of April 2020, after personal income tax returns are submitted.

Clean Air Programme in figures

As of the 28th of June, the number of submitted applications amounted to nearly 64,000, for a total amount of PLN 1.5 billion. The highest number of applications were submitted in the regional funds in Katowice, Krakow and Warsaw. To date, nearly 26,000 positive decisions granting the subsidies were made. The total value of the contracts signed to date amounts to PLN 300 million in total.

The works in the project are carried out in accordance with the schedule – none of the Regional Funds for Environmental Protection and Water Management did exceed the time allotted for processing a properly filled in application of 90 days.