Poland to launch two new funds supporting business innovation in mid-2025
Two new instruments to support business innovation with EU funds - the Critical Technology Support Fund with a budget of around PLN 4 billion (EUR 920.8 mln) and the Digital and Environmentally Friendly Transformation Fund with a budget of almost PLN 1 billion (EUR 230.2 mln) will be launched in the middle of next year, Poland's minister of development funds and regional policy Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz announced at a conference in Warsaw.
"We are experiencing a moment of absolute boom in the investment of European funds," Pelczynska-Nalecz said, opening Poland's Economy Summit 2024 in Warsaw.
"We are allocating almost PLN 200 billion from the national recovery plan KPO and structural funds to support Polish entrepreneurship, PLN 135 billion from KPO alone," she added.
As the development funds minister pointed out, the functioning of institutions that deal with supporting entrepreneurship is being improved and a new approach to calls is being applied.
"Firstly, the largest programme for innovation and support for enterprises in this area, which is implemented by Polish Agency for Enterprise Development PARP and Polish National Centre for Research and Development NCBR, is already being implemented in a different way - with a much greater focus on innovative technologies themselves (...), and the evaluation process is much shorter, a two-stage one," the minister pointed out.
Pelczynska-Nalecz admitted that Poland is not where it wants to be with innovation, and the goal is to increase small- and medium-sized enterprises' innovation level and growth through innovation of larger private companies, so that at least a few of them are in the 'Top 10' of the largest companies on the Polish market in the coming years.
"Secondly, we are creating two new instruments that will start as early as next year (...). The Critical Technology Support Fund (e.g. biotechnology) will start in the middle of next year and the initial support capital will be PLN 4 billion," the minister announced.
She added that the Digital and Environmentally Friendly Transformation Fund will also start in the middle of next year, with a budget of almost PLN 1 billion (EUR 230.2 mln).
"Our goal is to identify, after discussion with social partners (...), those technological areas that can and will become the engine of Polish development and, in terms of these areas, to give maximum support to Polish companies," she concluded.
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