Business Law Paper

Business Law Paper
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Recently, my employer decided to venture into the agriculture market. His aim was to create an establishment that would cater for financial needs, provide employment and serve as a platform for rural development in the area and other regions by sourcing employees from different regions of the country. With a large stretch of land, he intended to start with two sections of a farm. One section was going to hold greenhouses that specialized in spices and vegetables that could be sold locally and other plants that could be exported out of the country. The other section was going to hold farm animals like dairy cows and bulls. This section would also contain thoroughbred horses that were meant for export only. Agricultural products, mainly meat and milk would be sold locally to small scale stores and a bigger fraction would be sold to processing plants as a source of income for him and the employees.
After approximately two to three years, he planned to pool these funds and start a small dairy products and beef processing plant in order to expand his company and create more employment that would lead to the development of this region. The main problem he was facing was where to get the funds to start his project. The only resources he had was the land and a concrete business plan that needed sufficient funds to execute. I was assigned the task of finding a source of funds for this project. Due to certain reasons, my employer did not want bank loans as a source of funds but preferred grants or government funds that were available. This being the case, I resulted to the internet for relevant sources that would guide me in finding reliable and trustworthy sources of funds. The government and government based incentives on development were widely available online. After researching about grants and funds being offered by various organizations, I decided to go with EU grants because they offered different funding initiatives based on the field one was interested in (Milio, 2010).
The internet is full of sites and links that lead to European Union related information about the availability of funds and ways to access them. The validity of these websites was hard to prove (Bachtler & Turok, 2013). However, I came across research papers that were published on the internet about renewable energy and the involvement of the EU on funding. I went through the offshore wind projects funded by the EU. This information was available on a website about the European Wind Energy Association. It contained statistics for each year the EU funded wind energy in its member countries and the establishments it had made over the years. There were various programmes that coordinated with EWEA funded by the EU that I found to be authentic and existent after further research. There was also a full list of completed projects that had been funded by the European Union since 2010 and some which were still in progress. The success of these projects was not only documented on the website but was actually easy to trace to their countries of operation. I was convinced that the European Union grants were the best way to go so I decided to focus on it entirely. After going round in circles for a while, I found the European Union website.
On the EU website, the role of European Union funding was clearly outlined. A broad range of projects and programmes were supported by the EU according to this site. Areas such as regional and urban development, social inclusion and employment, agriculture and rural development, fishery and maritime policies, research, innovation and humanitarian aid were the main programmes and projects that were funded by the EU. My area of interest was agriculture and rural development. Seeing that my employer’s project could be funded by the EU, I decided to research more about how these funds could be accessed. In order to understand how to access these funds I figured it would be important to understand how available funds were managed from the source which is the European Union, to individuals in member countries who could benefit through accessing them.
Management of EU funds was based on very strict rules. To avoid misuse of these funds, there is tight control and supervision that ensure that all the money provided by the EU is used in a transparent and accountable manner. There are twenty eight EU commissioners that carry the ultimate responsibility of monitoring and controlling the proper spending of European Union funds. These commissioners might control the funds during allocation but other financial procedures like conducting checks on individuals and annual audits are the responsibility of national governments of the member countries selected for funding. Over seventy per cent of the European Union budget is managed through partnership with regional authorities in the nations with eligible applicants selected for funding. The funds are shared through five categories that further specify the roles to be carried out by these funds (Defazio et al., 2009). These categories are named according to their target applicants. They include; European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), European Social Fund (ESF), Cohesion Fund (CF), European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), and European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). Having found that my employer’s area of interest is covered under the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), I decided to investigate the procedure of application and how I could find out whether funds are available.
Grants and contracts were the main means of funding issued to individuals of member countries. As far as grants are concerned, calls for proposals were made in forms of public announcements. These announcements were supposed to notify people that grants were available and would be issued only to qualified individuals who had projects that were covered by the various allocations available at that time. After focusing on how the farmers and rural businesses were classified for qualification, I learnt a lot. First, most farmers were eligible for funding through direct income support payments. Farmers who received a third of the funds were mainly those who carried out green farming practices. Funds were also allocated based on the amount of land they held and how they would use their land to promote preservation of a bio diverse environment....