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The main objective for writing this article is to present the barriers to accessing EU funds at the stage of preparing an application for funding, as well as the barriers to executing project activities. The research objective, question, and problem as well as the statistical description of the research group and the measurement instruments have been highlighted in the article. The author attempts to answer the following questions: what are the main barriers/hurdles encountered by Polish benefi ciaries of EU funds allocated under national and regional operational programmes; which of the identified barriers to accessing EU funds is perceived as the most hindering in the process of executing EU projects; and how is the impact of EU funds on regional development assessed from the perspective of those people executing projects and taking part in projects fi nanced with EU funds? The following barriers can be enumerated as the most significant: the withholding of subsequent funding tranches while maintaining the obligation to pursue project execution, the highly bureaucratic application process for a subsidy, the bureaucratic system of post-project accounting, and the long deadlines for transferring subsequent tranches of funding. An analysis of the findings confirms that the beneficiaries of EU funds primarily fear losing fi nancial liquidity. Receiving a subsidy in the form of a refinancing of the incurred costs requires, on the one hand, efficient project management, and, on the other, a well-functioning institutional system that should support project recipients in their investment endeavours.

The main objective for writing this article is to present the barriers to accessing EU funds at the stage of preparing an application for funding, as well as the barriers to executing project activities. The research objective, question, and problem as well as the statistical description of the research group and the measurement instruments have been highlighted in the article. The author attempts to answer the following questions: what are the main barriers/hurdles encountered by Polish benefi ciaries of EU funds allocated under national and regional operational programmes; which of the identified barriers to accessing EU funds is perceived as the most hindering in the process of executing EU projects; and how is the impact of EU funds on regional development assessed from the perspective of those people executing projects and taking part in projects fi nanced with EU funds? The following barriers can be enumerated as the most significant: the withholding of subsequent funding tranches while maintaining the obligation to pursue project execution, the highly bureaucratic application process for a subsidy, the bureaucratic system of post-project accounting, and the long deadlines for transferring subsequent tranches of funding. An analysis of the findings confi rms that the benefi ciaries of EU funds primarily fear losing fi nancial liquidity. Receiving a subsidy in the form of a refi nancing of the incurred costs requires, on the one hand, efficient project management,and, on the other, a well-functioning institutional system that should support project recipients in their investment endeavours.

The result of an effective management of the redistribution of European Union funds should be a reduction of disparities between EU regions by guaranteeing their comprehensive and harmonious development and supporting the economic and social cohesion of member countries. A poorly-conducted programming process of financial interventionism, the source of which is EU funds, may result in divergence between regions, the direct effect of which would be their social and economic marginalisation. For this reason, it is important to skillfully manage those funds. The main aim of this article is to present the factors affecting the decision-making process of the use of EU co-financing, and that includes the pandemic as an external variable being a threat to the implementation of investments from the EU's structural funds. To explain the multivariate associations between explanatory variables and the binary outcome variables, logistic regression was employed. Based on the tests' results, significant associations were observed between the dependent variable and (a) participation in training co-financed by EU funds, (b) receiving information regarding additional EU funds as pandemic support, and (c) the suspension of planned investments using EU funds due to the pandemic situation. A comprehensive distribution of respondents according to the response categories in the analysed variables within the entire sample (N = 950) was presented. Corresponding associations were evident within a sub-sample (N = 303). The model showed that all significant independent variables explain the use of EU funds, but the model explains just 28.6% of the decision to use the funds. Thus, the following study indicates directions that require further research.