Czech state to provide co-financing for some EU-funded nonprofit projects

Nonprofit organizations will not have to raise their own co-financing for certain EU-funded projects in years to come as the Czech Finance Ministry originally proposed. The Czech state will continue to provide the necessary co-financing to ensure the provision of education, inclusion and social services by nonprofits.

The Government has approved the decision. Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier and Labor Minister Michaela Marksová Tominová (both Czech Social Democrats – ČSSD) announced the news to the Czech News Agency yesterday. 

When drawing on EU money the Czech Republic will have to provide part of the co-financing, which for public benefit projects can be as much as 15 % of their budgets. To date that entire amount has always been provided by the state.

The Finance Ministry had recently proposed rules requiring nonprofits to raise at least 5 % of the co-financing on their own. Dienstbier said many nonprofits would never be able to access EU money if that were the case.

The change would have restricted the services on offer for families with children, people in need, people living with disabilities, and senior citizens. Minister Dienstbier therefore proposed that no co-financing should have to be provided by nonprofits implementing certain public benefit projects and Marksová supported his proposal. 

Dienstbier told journalists yesterday that all of his proposals were incorporated into the Government’s approved decision. "For publicly beneficial activities in general, the maximum degree of co-financing will be 5 %, and in the selected categories of education, people living with disabilities and social services, zero co-financing will be automatic," he said. 

The Czech Republic could receive almost EUR 2.14 billion by 2020 from the new EU Operational Programme Employment alone. The country would then have to prove it had provided co-financing of almost CZK 12 billion.

The Finance Ministry’s idea was that at least one-third of that amount would be raised by the project implementers themselves, most of which are nonprofits. Representatives of such organizations criticized that proposal, and the Confederation of Employers’ and Entrepreneurs’ Associations also requested zero co-financing for public benefit projects.