The Polish Government has suspended the disbursement of European Union funds for the hospitality, tourism and culture sectors.
The move followed the revelation of apparent misspending of the cash after revelations surfaced about the money being used for luxury items claimed by families of government politicians.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk of the centre-left coalition government has blamed the former Conservative (PiS) administration for the scandal. He argued that the government devised faulty spending plans and caused delays in Poland receiving the funds, pushing his administration into speedy disbursement to meet allocation deadlines.
However, his party’s own MP, Artur Łącki, whose wife has allegedly been a beneficiary of some of the grants, said on Poland’s popular independent YouTube channel Kanał Zero that his party had colluded with Brussels over the freezing of the post-pandemic funds.
“They [EC] are normal people who have to take care of money therefore they said, ‘we will release the funds but first you must win the election’”, said Łącki when asked why there had been a delay in funding.
On August 12, the Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, the Minister of Development Funds and Regional Policy, announced she had “decided that no funds will be transferred for payments to beneficiaries until each individual contract has been audited and found to be compliant with the rules”.
On the same day justice minister Waldemar Żurek announced an investigation into how the money was being spent had been handed over by Polish prosecutors to the European Public Prosecutors Office.
The money in question is from a €300 million section of Poland’s €60 billion share of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery funds, intended to help the hospitality, tourism and culture sectors, which were hit by the pandemic lockdowns.
The issue came to light after Polish media published cases of the spending of funds on luxury items. They allegedly included yachts and saunas, and questionable projects, such as creating a platform to teach people how to play bridge, funding catering for a swingers club and establishing a business called “Glamping with Alpacas”.
More revelations have since come to light over grants issued in the culture sector.
There were smaller disbursements of around €5,000 to €6,000 or the “training in co-ordination, consultancy and choreography of scenes of intimacy in film and theatre”, “ecofeminism in practice from Latin America” and a “menstruality leadership programme”. There was also a grant of a similar size for an applicant who wanted to fund themselves training in advance of … migrating from Poland.
The PiS opposition, commenting on the revelations about the hospitality sector, accused the government of “gigantic abuse and misappropriation of funds”. It argued that the problem lay with the implementation of the disbursements, which allowed politicians families and friends to benefit
“This is a gigantic abuse and misappropriation of funds that were supposed to serve the development of our homeland,” said PiS party spokesman Rafał Bochenek on August 12, using graphics allegedly illustrating examples of misappropriated funds all over Poland.
The revelations had put the government on the defensive but it hit back on August 13 with Tusk declaring: “100 per cent responsibility for the problems related to the spending of European funds is on PiS and its stupid, aggressive and anti-European policy.”
He said he former ruling party had “wasted time” intended for spending the EU funds because, when it was in power, Brussels froze payments to Poland. That, he said, was due to concerns over the rule of law and the money was only released after Tusk’s government replaced the PiS in December 2023.
“The dilemma was simple: We could either lose the money or spend it as quickly as possible, including so that it could go to Polish businesses,” Tusk claimed.
However, Lacki’s remarks on the government colluding with Brussels were an echo of those made by Rafał Trzaskowski, Warsaw Mayor and unsuccessful Tusk party candidate in this spring’s presidential election.
In early 2023, he told the Liberal-leaning radio station TokFM that his party had persuaded Brussels not to cancel the funding for Poland but to put it on ice pending his party coming to power and taking action over the alleged rule of law violations.
Tusk’s party did come to power and the funds were unlocked soon after. There have been, though, no judicial reforms implemented as a result of gridlock between the Polish President Andrzej Duda and the government.
That has been a result of the latter’s insistence that all judicial appointments made during the time of the PiS government were illegitimate and should be annulled.
