European Structural Funds and Rentability

Abstract

One of the great achievements of the European Union is the creation of the single market, but for it to work efficiently, it is imperative that the gaps between the participating states be minimal. Thus, to address this issue the EU has created a Regional Development Policy through which it allocates Structural and Cohesion Funds to finance projects in countries with lower economic development. Lately there is an increasingly fierce debate on the efficiency of structural funds for EU members in Central and Eastern Europe. This debate is fueled by various studies that show that although many of the projects financed from Structural Funds achieve their objectives, the effects are not visible in the aggregate indicators.

Within this article we intend to analyze the impact that the Structural Funds have on the profitability of the beneficiary companies. For this we analyzed a group of companies that benefited from non-reimbursable financial aid during the multiannual financial period 2007-2013 and a group of companies that did not benefit from this facility. Following the analysis of the financial accounting data reported by the companies in the two groups, statistically significant differences were identified.