The Cohesion Policy and Development - A Preliminary Assessment

The paper reflects on statistical relationships between the inflow of EU financial resources to Polish territorial units (voivodships, NUTS 3 and poviats) and the pace of their economic growth. Correlation analysis reveals that the less developed units which enjoyed relatively more massive inflows per capita grew more slowly than the better developed ones – the correlation coefficients are negative (for the voivodships) or close to zero (for NUTS 3 and poviats). This suggests that until now, the EU funds have led to a stronger demand effect than the supply effect in the Polish economy. It may therefore be claimed that in the next programming period 2014–2020, more funds received from the EU should be devoted to the support of economic development than to the improvement of living conditions.