These are additional forms of support for entrepreneurs who are most severely affected by the effect of the pandemic,

said Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin, Minister of Economic Development, Labour and Technology.

Four instruments of support within the Industry Shield in the following month

The so-called Industry Shield, adopted in December 2020, provides the Council of Ministers with the possibility to issue regulations which are a flexible tool for introducing new and modifying existing forms of aid directed to entrepreneurs. The government may thus grant further payments for other accounting periods, and may also grant aid to other sectors if the situation so requires.

The Council of Ministers issued on 19 January this year a regulation prolonging and extending aid from the Industry Shield. Its provisions are repealed on 28 February 2021 and will be replaced by the new regulation adopted by the government on Friday.

The government decided to prolong and extend certain forms of support provided for by the Industry Shield. They include:

• exemptions from the payment of social security and health insurance contributions, contributions for the Labour Fund, the Solidarity Fund, the Guaranteed Employee Benefits Fund and the Bridge Pension Fund for December 2020, as well as January and February 2021; the exact period of exemption depends on the industry in which the entrepreneur is operating,
• compensation for staff salaries from the Guaranteed Employee Benefits Fund,
• payment of the downtime allowance,
• grants to cover the running costs of business activity for micro and small enterprises; the grant may be awarded up to two or three times, depending on the type of the predominant business activity of the entrepreneur.

Regulation regarding the Industry Shield – which conditions must be met in order to apply for support

The aid provided for in the regulation is aimed at those branches of the Polish economy which are currently most affected by the next wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

The main conditions for using the support instruments are: conducting business activity identified by the given Polish Classification of Activities (PKD) code as predominant on 30 November 2020 and the demonstration of a decline in revenue of at least 40% in the relevant comparative periods.

In response to the expectations of entrepreneurs, the government decided to include in the provisions of the new regulation:

• the introduction of an additional period for which it will be possible to show a decline in revenue, so that the applicants can refer not only to the month immediately preceding the reference month or the corresponding month of the previous year, but also back to September 2020,
• the possibility of obtaining a downtime allowance regardless of the fact that such support has been used in the past.

190 billion Polish zlotys of support for Polish entrepreneurs

The regulation, as well as the previous “anti-crisis shields”, aims to protect entrepreneurs from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sanitary restrictions it forced, which will directly increase the macroeconomic stability of the Polish state. Such initiative affects the economic relations of the countries in the European Union as well as on the international stage in the post-pandemic perspective.

Poland is one of the European leaders in providing assistance to entrepreneurs. Almost 190 billion zlotys have been allocated to this purpose since the beginning of the pandemic, which accounts for nearly 9 percent of the total Polish GDP.