A Second Group of Romanian Officials Visits the Polish Managing Structures in charge of Implementing and Monitoring SF Use

The goal of the activity under the second phase of the Project “Services of Specialised Training for the Development of Technical and General Competences of the Personnel within the Managing Authority, Intermediate Bodies and Beneficiary Institutions of the Regional Operational Programme” was to share experiences, methodologies, and best practices with the Polish colleagues from the Structural Fund managing authorities, like it occurred in October.
The interest of the Romanian visitors was focussed on how cohesion policies are carried out in the Polish context, as well as on the criteria of territorial distribution of European funds. The framework emerged is that of a country undergoing a strong evolution which after using the period 2004-2006 as an experimentation, under the following cycle 2007-2013 has strongly broadened the spectrum of ministries and beneficiary authorities involved, as well as priority sectors of intervention, thus mainly aiming at three guiding principles:

1. Constant improvement of the management systems through the adoption of new procedures and strong investment in ICT;
2. Boost to capacity building of the officials in charge through paths of rewarding and performance assessment;
3. Implementation of numerous activities aiming at internal and external communication for more widely diffusing the knowledge about Structural Funds and their use.

The hosting structure underlined how the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, assigned to Poland in the second semester of 2011, was the occasion for submitting, in this context, a complex whole of proposals based on the experience previously acquired by them at national level insofar as they laid the shared basis of a discussion with the other European Union member states.
Among the main priorities and criticalities emphasized, there were those related to the tools of loan and co-funding, so as to allow that a consistent implementation of projects from the point of view of time was not hindered by financial difficulties as provided by strong economic loans by the implementing bodies. Also the need to introduce criteria for forfeit budgeting was highlighted e.g. the flat rate, also for ESF-funded projects, thus shifting the focus of controls from the attention on mere accounting to a process of verification majorly related to the achievement of the results and the effective implementation of the Priorities of intervention.