Exhaustion of Allocation and the Right of an Applicant to Receive Co-financing from EU Funds: Commentary on the Judgement of the Supreme Administrative Court of 11 April 2019 (I GSK 378/19)

Abstract

The commented judgement concerns the issue of refusal to grant co-financing from EU funds in a situation in which during the appeal procedure (as a result of which the project obtained a higher score than other projects that received funding), the funds allocated to the competition were exhausted. In the commented judgement, the Supreme Administrative Court considered whether the refusal to grant funding motivated by exhaustion of the allocation may give way to the institution’s obligation to shape competition procedures in such a way that the appeal procedure in these circumstances does not turn out to be merely illusory. In this commentary, the author approved the conclusion of the Court that the amount of funds allocated to the competition is secondary to the institution’s obligation to ensure a correct and reliable application evaluation procedure. It is necessary to shape the competition procedures in such a way that the entity which launched the appeal procedure has the opportunity to prove its arguments and, as a consequence, to receive the subsidy. The conclusions made by the Supreme Administrative Court remain particularly relevant from the perspective of the upcoming works on the new act defining the rules for the implementation of cohesion policy programs financed in the 2021–2027 financial perspective.