Access to EU funds vs. Financial risks faced by rural municipalities of the Wielkopolskie Voivodeship

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to present the rural municipalities' access to EU funds and their impact on the occurrence of financial risks. One of the Poland's largest voivodeships, Wielkopolskie, was used as the example. A group of 116 rural local government units were assumed to be the subject matter of this study. The timeframes for this study are the period from 2006 to 2015. Because of the complex nature of the municipalities' financial operations, they were expressed with a selected group of indices divided into four groups in line with an approach adopted by the author. A variance analysis was performed to check whether the level of EU funds accessed had a statistically significant impact on the results regarding specific risk characteristics of the municipalities' financial operations. The author also used the descriptive and comparative methods as well as selected descriptive statistics methods and the Pearson correlation coefficient. In this study, the municipalities demonstrated different levels of access to EU funds. Generally, smaller, peripheral units proved to be more effective in accessing EU aid than larger ones located next to big urban centres. As shown by the variance analysis, the level of aid accessed has a statistically significant impact on the local government units' financial operations, in addition to financial liquidity. Note that higher absorption levels were correlated with smaller financial autonomy and greater indebtedness.