“We are deceived by the promises of the Ministry of Climate and Environment and the National Fund for Environmental Protection that the money for the work performed will finally be paid,” says Grzegorz Furmann from the Clean Air and Energy Association, one of the organizers of tomorrow's protest in Warsaw.
Quoted fragment of the program:
“The Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment promised that all final payment applications submitted by the end of 2024 will be settled by September 30, 2025. I only forget that we are talking about 9 months. However, this deadline was not met“explains Furmann.
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— From the beginning of October, we started protesting in front of the provincial environmental protection funds, and finally we are in Warsaw. Today we have meetings in the Sejm, tomorrow we will simply protest because we are at the end of our strength – the interlocutor emphasizes.
Delays in the subsidy payment system have specific consequences for entrepreneurs. According to the program's assumptions, contractors receiving works receive an advance payment of 50 percent of the subsidy, which is not sufficient to cover the actual costs. Furmann cites an example: “Let's assume a subsidy of PLN 100,000 net, i.e. PLN 108,000 gross. The client must cover VAT – PLN 8,000. The fund pays PLN 50,000 to the contractor. But the labor costs are PLN 75-80,000, so the company had to add several dozen thousand PLN, often taking out loans. Each such application is a minus of several dozen thousand zlotys for the company” – he explains.
Several months of delays
“The scale of delays ranges from several to a dozen or so months. We have record-breaking applications where we have to wait 400-450 days for certain things,” Furmann enumerates. This is a stark contrast to the provisions of the regulations, which provide for 30 days for the assessment of the application and 14 days for the transfer, i.e. a total of one and a half months. “In practice, the wait is ten to fifteen months,” he says.
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The bottleneck in the payout system also has dramatic consequences for the entrepreneurs themselves. “Today the main problem is that we are playing some unusual game with the fund. I have the impression that the fund is also playing a game with itself, because the provincial funds say one thing and the National Fund says something different,” admits Furmann. The interviewee's personal situation illustrates the scale of the tragedy: “My company is extremely in debt. The money I'm waiting for from the fund is not money I'm waiting to earn, but to… just to avoid drowning in debt, because I have loans, I have money borrowed from my family — dad, mom, grandma. Everyone contributed to making this program possible. Today we are left out in the cold.”
The problem also lies in the Fund's internal inconsistencies. “The presidents of provincial funds came out and claimed that they had no bottlenecks, and in front of them stood a group of 100-120 people who simply did not have transfers. The question was: where is the money?” – Furmann asks rhetorically.
He also addressed the issue of abuse in the program. The government counter-argues that it has tightened the program, which previously contained irregularities – e.g. in the field of thermal modernization valuation.
Response to abuse?
“Over a million applications have been submitted, over a million beneficiaries, and the Fund has detected irregularities in six thousand, i.e. 0.6 percent. And because of this, life is being made more difficult for the rest, leading to bankruptcies and human tragedies,” Furmann replied.
“We are fully in favor of this as contractors who have done their job diligently to prosecute. However, there are state authorities, the prosecutor's office, the police,” he added.
The entire program:
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