According to media reports released earlier this week, there are factions inside the European Commission that advocate for scrapping regional schemes in favour of national operational programmes.

Having experienced four decades of centrally-planned economy, we are vehemently opposed to this idea. The issue of low competitiveness, which the European Union is currently dealing with, cannot be resolved with a more centralised approach and lowering the rate of investment in regional potential. Resolving this problem requires unleashing Europe's untapped potential, which stems from underdeveloped regions. Decentralisation is the answer here,

said Jan Szyszko, Deputy Minister for Funds and Regional Policy.

As he pointed out, Poland's system governing EU funds and investments is the most decentralised among all Member States, with great results to show for it. 

Poland can be seen as a success story as far as the Cohesion Policy is concerned. Conventionally, this is one of the crucial and largest parts of the EU budget, allocated to individual Member States in quotas to be used to foster the development of underperforming region. This success was possible due to the understanding that the responsibility for investment decisions cannot be shouldered solely by the central government - it requires insight from regional and local governments. We know it works really well,

the politician pointed out.

The Deputy Minister also shared his view on the suggestion of changing the way EU funds are being spent to bring it more in line with the design of the Recovery and Resilience Facility established to support the post-COVID-19 recovery, which is currently debated in Brussels.

The idea of linking reforms and investments with EU funds itself could be up for discussion. On the other hand, one has to wonder whether it is a good idea to plan 55 reforms at once, which was the case in the Polish National Recovery Plan. This is an open question, although I am not going to pretend that it is not rhetorical. Perhaps the better way is to focus on a dialogue, followed by a couple of crucial reforms that the given Member State actually needs and wants, rather than to impose them,

he noted.

Mr. Szyszko concluded saying that any attempt to introduce such a scheme and make it a part of the Cohesion Policy may not come at the expense of its regional component.