Finance Ministry rewrites payment order templates for European Union funded programmes

Poland’s Minister of Finance and Economy has issued a regulation amending the rules on payments under programmes financed with European funds, replacing the existing payment-order templates with three new annexes. The regulation of 21 September 2026 was published in the Dziennik Ustaw of 25 September 2026 as item 1250 and enters into force on 30 September 2026. It applies to beneficiaries and to the institutions that implement and disburse European money.

What the regulation changes

The amendment rewrites the annexes of the Regulation of the Minister of Finance of 21 December 2012 on payments under programmes financed with the participation of European funds and on the transmission of information concerning those payments. Under paragraph 1, annexes 1 to 1b of the 2012 regulation are replaced by the wording set out in annexes 1 to 3 of the new act.

The legal basis is Article 188(6) of the Act of 27 August 2009 on public finance, published in the Dziennik Ustaw of 2025 as item 1483 with later amendments. The 2012 regulation being amended was last consolidated in the Dziennik Ustaw of 2024 as item 869 and of 2025 as item 1297. The new act was signed on behalf of the minister by J. Neneman, marked as acting in place of the minister.

Three templates, three funding generations

The three annexes correspond to three distinct generations of European funding, each with its own payment-order form:

• Annex 1 — payment order under paragraph 3(1) of the regulation, covering the European Fisheries Fund, the Swiss-Polish Cooperation Programme, ESF Grants and the Financial Mechanisms, including the 2007–2013 operational programme for fisheries.
• Annex 2 — payment order under paragraph 3(1a), covering the 2014–2021 perspective: the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, the European Fund for Aid to the Most Deprived, the Connecting Europe Facility and the 2014–2021 Financial Mechanisms.
• Annex 3 — payment order under paragraph 3(1b), covering the 2021–2027 and 2021–2028 generation: the European Social Fund Plus for material deprivation, the Just Transition Fund, the Connecting Europe Facility 2021–2027, the Swiss-Polish Cooperation Programme, the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2021–2028, the EEA Financial Mechanism 2021–2028, European Funds for Fisheries and the European Funds for Food Aid.

What the forms require

Each template is divided into five blocks: ordering party data, beneficiary or recipient data, project, contract and application data, payment and budget classification data, and a declaration. The explanatory notes attached to each annex specify which fields are mandatory and which are filled in automatically.

• Payment type is coded Z for an advance and R for reimbursement of expenditure incurred.
• Source of financing is coded RC for the targeted reserve, CB for the budget part and NW for non-expiring expenditure, the last available only for national co-financing orders.
• Beneficiary sector is coded P for private, S for local government and A for state administration.
• The payment title field allows free text of up to 140 characters, with the order number and project number inserted automatically.
• The declaration confirms that the applicant holds the written consent of the disposer of the relevant budget part, defaulting to “Yes”.
• The “copy application data” field defaults to “No”.
• Tax identifiers are validated against the applicable algorithm, with foreign tax numbers or PESEL-only entries permitted once the Polish tax number box is unchecked.

Why it matters

The regulation is a technical but binding instrument: from 30 September 2026, payment orders submitted under any of the covered programmes must follow the new templates, and the explanatory notes define which fields are mandatory, automatically populated or conditionally required. Beneficiaries and implementing institutions have no transition period, since the act takes effect five days after publication.

Source: Dziennik Ustaw, No. 1250 of 25 September 2026, section I (official reference: Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1250).