The National Recovery Plan (NRP), given the scale of the funding involved and the significance of the dispute with the European Commission over the rule of law, became one of the main topics of public debate on European funds for the period 2021–2026 – as many as 80 per cent of Poles were aware of the existence of this document in 2025. The NRP was a key tool for responding to the economic and social crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was also a point of contention for successive governments and administrations, which struggled to meet the European Commission’s requirements for securing the funds. Consequently, Poland joined the programme late, and was forced to allocate funds in haste and without a structured plan commensurate with the scale of the crises, which limited the extent of the benefits achieved through this funding.

Poland now faces the task of preparing the National and Regional Partnership Plan (NRPP), which will be the most important document setting out how EU funds are to be used after 2028. Its preparation will take place against the backdrop of a fundamental shift in the EU’s approach to managing the common budget. A significantly larger proportion of the funding is to be linked to the implementation of agreed reforms and investments and the achievement of specific outcomes, rather than, as has been the case to date, primarily to the accounting for expenditure incurred. This means extending the logic familiar from the NRP to further areas of the EU budget, whereby the disbursement of further funds depends on the achievement of specific milestones and targets.

This change will be particularly significant for Poland given the restructuring of cohesion policy, of which Poland is currently the largest beneficiary within the EU. The existing system, based on numerous separate programmes, is to be aligned much more closely with the logic of a single national plan. Consequently, access to funds and the effectiveness of their use will increasingly depend on the quality of national planning, the ability of the government and local authorities to implement agreed reforms and investments, and the achievement of targeted outcomes. Therefore, the manner in which the Polish NRPP is prepared will be of crucial importance for the scale and quality of investments financed from EU funds over the coming decade.

Despite such a significant change in the way EU funds are managed, public debate on the NRPP is considerably less intense than it was during the work on the NRP. This poses a significant risk, as under the new model, the quality of decisions taken during the plan’s drafting stage will largely determine the subsequent possibilities for utilising the funds. Limited debate and insufficient involvement of local authorities, social and economic partners, and other stakeholders may lead to an inaccurate identification of development needs, a poor alignment of reforms and investments with the specific characteristics of individual regions, and the selection of objectives that will prove difficult to implement effectively later on. Consequently, Poland risks not only failing to make full use of the available funding, but also allocating funds to measures that will not address the country’s most pressing development challenges. Involving various stakeholders as early as the stage of preparing the NRPP, however, can improve the quality of the assessment, help to devise realistic reforms and investments, and enhance the capacity for their subsequent implementation. What is at stake, therefore, is not only the absorption of EU funds, but above all whether they will serve as a catalyst for sustainable development. In this publication, we discuss the aspects of the NRPP programming process that are most crucial to its success, as well as the potential areas of influence for stakeholders and prospective beneficiaries.