Comparison of administrative Difficulties between European Funds and Investment Incentives

This paper analyses situation with investment incentives and European funds from investor's point of view. This paper analyses existing legislation and documentation, conditions and rules that have to be followed by applicant for submitting application and successfully evaluated by responsible institutions to obtain one of the public aid. The aim of this paper is to find difficulties in whole administrative process for both tools and determinate which administrative process has better conditions and is easily fulfilled for applicants. The finding is compared with empirical data of submitted and approved applications for both aids from the previous financial framework 2007-2013 in cohesion region of Northeast, Czech Republic in the level NUTS II. The methodology in the paper uses descriptive and explanatory methods with comparison of empirical data. Main results are limited time for administrative preparation for European funds. European funds are based on different calls dependent on specific region and evaluation is very strict, so chance of rejection of application is higher than at investment incentives. On the other hand, investment incentives are not limited by deadlines for submitting application and the evaluation process is not that strict. Empirics of submitted and approved applications underlay the results. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license