The European Union sees the role of innovations as measurably influencing the improvement of social and economic development in the regions of its member states. Actions that promote the implementation of innovations in the SME sector as one of the elements having a positive impact on the European Union's cohesion policy have a special role in supporting enterprises. Therefore, the EU operational programmes dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises are a valuable source of external financing for innovations in these entities. The implementation of innovative investment projects positively influences the development of enterprises. A company resistant to implementing innovations may lose its competitive position on the market and slow down its development. The aim of this article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the implementation of innovative investments between the enterprises that received financial assistance from the European Union in relation to the enterprises that implemented innovations using other sources of financing. The study shows that enterprises covered by financial support from operational programmes have a higher level of innovative investments than other economic entities. Companies receiving EU aid are more often implementing production innovations among all four types of innovations as compared to other enterprises. In addition, it was found that in the lack of financial support from the EU, almost half of the companies would not be able to implement innovations as such. Therefore, the issue of innovations implemented in enterprises with the use of the EU financial aid should be considered as a currently relevant topic and an extremely important one from the standpoint of entrepreneurship development. This study should be considered unique, as there are no studies, to the best of the author's knowledge, containing comparative analyses in this area.

中文翻译：

---

使用欧盟资金在企业中实施创新的比较分析

欧盟认为创新的作用可观地影响着其成员国地区社会和经济发展的改善。作为对欧盟凝聚政策产生积极影响的要素之一，促进中小企业领域创新实施的行动在支持企业方面具有特殊作用。因此，专门针对中小企业的欧盟运营计划是这些实体中创新活动的外部融资的宝贵来源。创新型投资项目的实施对企业发展产生积极影响。拒绝实施创新的公司可能会失去其在市场上的竞争地位并减慢其发展速度。本文的目的是对获得欧盟资助的企业与使用其他融资来源实施创新的企业之间的创新投资的实施情况进行比较分析。研究表明，运营计划提供财务支持的企业比其他经济实体拥有更高水平的创新投资。与其他企业相比，获得欧盟援助的公司在所有四种创新中更经常实施生产创新。此外，还发现，由于缺乏欧盟的资金支持，几乎一半的公司将无法实施此类创新。因此，从企业家精神发展的角度来看，在使用欧盟财政援助的企业中实施创新的问题应被视为当前相关主题，并且是极为重要的主题。据作者所知，该研究应视为唯一的研究，因为尚无研究，其中包含该领域的比较分析。