Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
Ms Monika Kapturska,Ms Anna Wasowicz, Ms Izabela
Gorczyca and Ms Marta Lorens
6 MARCH 2008
Q300 Chairman: Could you use more
money?
Ms Lorens: If we look at the previous experience,
utilisation of 80 per cent, it was like a period of training for
us from 2004-06 and it turned out that we managed.
Q301 Chairman: You managed to spend
80 per cent of what you were given?
Ms Lorens: Yes.
Q302 Lord Trimble: Would you expect
to spend more than 80 per cent in this current plan?
Ms Lorens: I would be optimistic.
Q303 Lord Trimble: If you had even
more could you spend it?
Ms Lorens: The needs are great. With good management,
yes of course.
Q304 Lord Trimble: What I am getting
at here is we know from speaking to the Commission that they are
operating on the basis that countries, regions, cannot absorb
more than the equivalent of four per cent of GDP per annum. Do
you share that view? Do you think that is the right sort of figure?
Do you think it would be possible to absorb more? I am just looking
for a response to that.
Ms Lorens: Thank you for the question and I
will give you the answer in written form.
Q305 Chairman: Can we move on to
Wielkopolska. We may come back at the end, but it is nice to give
somebody else a chance to present because your two regions are
very different.
Ms Wasowicz: Have you received our presentations?
Q306 Chairman: No.
Ms Wasowicz: We are still waiting for the photocopies
to come.
Ms Kapturska: I just wanted to tell you that
we have prepared our Regional Operational Programme and it is
in English. This is almost the last version because it is 30 August
2007 and we signed it with the Commission on 6 September. Here
you have the presentation from my colleague on Structural Funds.
Q307 Chairman: Perhaps while we are
waiting we could ask you how many people you have in the Office
here.
Ms Kapturska: Three of us.
Q308 Lord Trimble: So the Office
is empty now!
Ms Kapturska: We have a stagiere from the Marshal's
Office of the Wielkopolska Region and she is watching the Office.
Q309 Chairman: Answering the telephones.
Ms Kapturska: Yes.
Q310 Chairman: You have heard the
sort of things we want to know, and I think we can probably ask
you those independent of your presentation. You are a richer region
than Lubelskie. How much funds are you in receipt of?
Ms Wasowicz: In the current Financial Perspective
we received €1.2 billion in the framework of our Regional
Operational Programme for Wielkopolska Voivodship. However, that
is not the final sum that we are going to absorb because beneficiaries
originating from our voivodship can apply to the funds on a national
level also. This is not the final amount of money that will be
absorbed in our region, we expect more than that.
Q311 Lord Woolmer of Leeds: More
European funds?
Ms Wasowicz: Yes, European funds. That is only
the co-financing in the framework of the EU Funds.
Q312 Chairman: Do you find you are
able to absorb as many funds as are available to you?
Ms Wasowicz: This is a very difficult question
at this stage of the procedure because we could only participate
in the first Financial Perspective from 2004-06, so we do not
have any evaluation reports carried out yet. We will have to wait
for these results. We do not have any official data or indicators
at this stage. Let me remind you that this programme is still
going on, it is not closed, the projects are running this year.
I suggest we should wait for the first outcomes. We are very sorry
that you do not have our presentation in front of you but it will
give you a progress overview of the Perspective that is being
implemented right now.
Q313 Chairman: We would find that
useful. I have got a general question that is slightly difficult
to answer. You are the first representatives of a country we have
talked to that are really new to the whole business of Structural
Funds. There is a considerable movement in the old European states
to say that more money should be given to the new countries and
the Commission, I am sure, would tend to agree that they are worried
about absorption but the Commission seem to feel it is all going
very nicely. I would like to know what problems, if any, you have
found in your dealings with the Commission. Are there problems
of not understanding or not being able to get them to finance
projects that you would like financed?
Ms Kapturska: If I could answer because for
ten years I worked for local authorities and now in Brussels,
so I have got some experience. The local authorities say they
can absorb as much money as possible. Usually, for example, the
communities built one road every two years but they could build
more. Now the Marshals, which are dividing the money and which
are the managing authorities of the Structural Funds, are the
presidents of the regions. We have got everything in our presentation.
Q314 Chairman: We will catch up.
Ms Kapturska: They tried to divide all the money
very carefully but everybody is complaining we do not have enough
money. It is the lack of information first and the bureaucracy
which is too much and is a barrier as well.
Q315 Chairman: Your bureaucracy or
the EU bureaucracy?
Ms Kapturska: Both of them. There are many rules
created by our government which do not exist under the rules of
the Commission.
Chairman: The Commission said something like
that to us. They said that often they felt the rules which stood
in the way were those imposed by the states.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds: If the Commission asked
your region to produce some concrete evidence of the bureaucracy
and the costs and your suggestion how this could be improved,
would that be possible to do? The Commission said that everybody
complains but nobody produces the evidence. That is not in your
region.
Q316 Chairman: Generally.
Ms Kapturska: We have no time to do it because
we have a lack of staff dealing with Structural Funds. We have
almost as many inhabitants as Ireland, it is over three million
people, and in the last period we had just 80 people to deal with
Structural Funds in our region at a regional level. We are trying
to get more and now we have a maximum of 120. You can imagine
this is a problem and that is why it is very difficult for them
to prepare reports like that.
Q317 Lord Woolmer of Leeds: They
just have not got the time to do it, they are too busy getting
on with the job.
Ms Kapturska: Yes.
Q318 Chairman: Are you short of people because
you are short of trained people or you just have not had time
to hire them? Half of Poland appears to be in London at the moment
and I sometimes wonder if we have taken a few of your trained
people. Is it a shortage of people who know how to do the work?
Ms Kapturska: Yes. Many of them came in at the
beginning of the summer so they had time to read all the documents
and so on to do the work but the problem, which is a really important
one, is the Marshals' Offices at the regional level which deal
with the Structural Funds do not pay enough money. Salaries are
very, very low.
Ms Lorens: That is true for my region as well.
The private sector offers better working conditions and remuneration
for such experts. They do not stay with the local authorities
at this level, they go to the private sector. The Marshals' Offices
suffer from lack of qualified people.
Ms Kapturska: People who were experienced in
the period of 2004-06 went to private companies or became directors.
The others are quite new and this is a problem. It does not go
against implementing the Structural Funds in Poland because all
the communities, provinces and so on are waiting for the money
and are ready to absorb the funds, I am perfectly sure about that.
Q319 Chairman: Colleagues, do you
want to ask any more questions now or shall we ask Ms Kapturska
to do her presentation, now that we all have it? If we could ask
you to get through it in about ten minutes and that will leave
us time to ask questions.
Ms Kapturska: First of all, I wanted to tell
you what a great honour it is for us to present our Regional Office
to the House of Lords. I would like to present Anna Wasowicz,
who will speak about Structural Funds, and Ms Izabela Gorczyca,
our third collaborator. I would like to speak about the Office
for four minutes, a maximum of five, and Anna will speak about
Structural Funds. I will start with the Office. As you can see,
as with all self-respecting regions, we are in the heart of Europe.
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