New rules for government grant awards

by Magdalena Skurowska

11 July 2023

The resolution of the Council of Ministers of 5 June 2023 amended the Programme for supporting investments of considerable importance to Poland's economy for 2011–2030.

What has changed are certain key conditions for awarding the government grant, i.e. the national grant for initial investments in:

creating a new company;
increasing production capacity;
overhauling the production process;
diversifying production by introducing new products;
acquiring assets of a company in liquidation or a company that would have been liquidated if it had not been acquired.

Key changes

It is now easier to access subsidies as minimum thresholds for capex and new jobs have been lowered for certain categories (sizes) of companies and for selected investment project locations.
The minimum number of new jobs that must be created, required for receiving the grant to reinvest in the existing company, has been reduced by 90%.
Rules for evaluating the investment project have changed and thus qualitative assessment criteria are now aligned with the rules applicable to the Polish Investment Zone (income tax exemption).
It has been made easier for large companies to meet the requirement of collaboration with the higher education and science sector as the list of participating schools has been extended to include secondary schools.
Investors may now change project parameters in certain cases during the investment project implementation, including in case of force majeure.

Government grant - what is it about?

Eligible for the grant are still investors wishing to have the following costs subsidized:

costs of investing in property, plant and equipment (PPE) and intangible assets;
costs of creating new jobs.

The grant is a non-repayable financial subsidy for investments in production and services that fulfil specific requirements (baseline criteria before reductions for certain categories of companies and locations):

strategic investments with capex of a minimum of 160 million Polish zloty and creating a minimum of 50 new jobs;
innovation investments resulting in product or process innovations on a national scale, with capex of a minimum of 7 million Polish zloty and creating a minimum of 20 new jobs;
modern business services centres with capex of a minimum of 1 million Polish zloty and creating a minimum of 100 new jobs;
R&D centres with capex of a minimum of 1 million Polish zloty and creating a minimum of 10 new jobs for people with a university degree.

Grant amount

Awarded companies can count on subsidies with a maximum support intensity of 25% of the capital expenditure or up to 40 thousand Polish zloty for every newly created job. In addition, it is possible to obtain an employee training subsidy of up to 7 thousand Polish zloty per employee.

As the process of applying for a government grant is lengthy and the state aid application must be submitted before the investment project is commenced, we encourage you to start taking appropriate steps well in advance. At Rödl & Partner, we actively support our clients in obtaining grants from the various sources of state aid available - do note hesitate to contact us.

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Magdalena Skurowska

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