Instruments for contracting territorial development in Poland – lessons learned and perspectives until 2030

Abstract

Instruments for contracting territorial development have been employed in Poland for over two decades. The first Polish experience in this area dates back to 1995, when, as a pilot project, the Regional Contract for Katowickie Voivodeship was concluded. Contracts concluded in subsequent years were addressed to all 16 Polish regions. However, the Polish experience related to contracting development to date allows us to conclude that the implementation of this approach was moderately successful. Responsible for this state of affairs are errors and inconsistencies committed both at the programming stage and at the implementation stage of subsequent versions of a contract. It should be emphasized, however, that these failures and the reasons behind them did not escape the notice of the institutions responsible for regional policy in Poland, therefore the conclusions drawn from them were used to improve subsequent versions of the contract. The last attempt took place in 2020. Thus, the purpose of this article is to present new development contracting instruments described in revised in 2020 the Act of 6 December 2006 on the principles of development policy, namely: programme contract, sectoral contract and territorial agreement. Their introduction is another step leading to the strengthening of the territorial dimension of Polish regional policy. Analysis of the three new instruments was preceded by the presentation of Poland’s experience to date in contracting development. Thanks to this, it was possible to illustrate how Polish regional policy improved its approach in this respect, trying to eliminate the weaknesses identified during the implementation of their previous versions in subsequent editions of contracts.