Agriculture in Croatia still represents an important economic activity contributing to the gross value added (GVA) with 3-4% (2007-2016). The proportion declined from its peak in 2008 (4%) with the onset of the financial crisis, to 3.1% in 2016. The share of food industry is more or less constant in the same period, amounting to about 3.2% in the total GVA. During the same period employment rate in legal entities registered for Agriculture, Food production and Beverage production is between 4.5% and 5% of total employment. To help Central and Eastern European countries address their structural adjustments in the agricultural sector and rural development, the EU has developed the pre-accession programs SAPARD - Special Accession Program for Agriculture and Rural Development (2000-2006) and IPARD - Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance - Rural Development (2007-2014). The general objectives of both programs were to implement the acquis relating to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In Croatia, the use of pre-accession funds started in 2006 with SAPARD (2005-2006), and ended in 2014 with IPARD (2007-2014). Until then, Croatian farmers had at their disposal generous funds from the national budget The European Union (EU) countries have a long-term practice of monitoring and evaluating the performance of rural development policy and programs. For this purpose, a system of common monitoring objectives, procedures and indicators was developed in form of the common monitoring and evaluation framework (CMEF). During the accession phase, EU candidate countries are entitled to pre-accession EU funds, which, inter alia, serve the purpose of adopting the monitoring and evaluation practice of the implementation of publicly funded programs. One of the shortcomings in the implementation of pre-accession funds in Croatia is the lack of impact assessment, especially on the business entities to which most of the funds were allocated. This study seeks to measure and elaborate the impact of SAPARD and IPARD grants on firm survival, output growth, employment growth, capital growth, productivity growth and indebtedness in Croatian agricultural, food manufacturing and beverage manufacturing industries in short- and mid-run after receiving program financial support. In the chapter „Previous Research“, the author in several subchapters presents a historical overview of agricultural aid based on the Common Agricultural Policy as well as all the reforms that the CAP has experienced throughout history, to date. One subchapter refers to the review of national models of agricultural aid granted in the Republic of Croatia, until the beginning of the implementation of the pre-accession programs SAPARD and IPARD, which are also presented in detail in subchapter 2.3 "Pre-accession programs and measures". The subchapter "Overview of previous research on the impact of aid on the business of beneficiaries" is important for this paper, in which similar research conducted on beneficiaries in a number of countries is presented. Among them, the largest number of studies conducted relate to the impact of pre-accession programs in various sectors of agriculture and food industry in the Czech Republic. In chapter „Materials and Methods“, the methods used in the research, a combination of difference-in difference (DID) approach and propensity score matching (PSM)), which are based on a counterfactual approach are described. The business performance indicators that were researched are also described - productivity and employment as simple indicators and Altman's Z-score as a complex indicator. The chapter also presents the procedure of sampling and finding the control group, which is a basic prerequisite for conducting the analysis with a counterfactual approach. Chapter 4 „Research results“ is divided in several subchapters in which the process of pairing beneficiaries and control groups is presented, as well as the results of calculating the average effect of aid for treated companies. Results of the analysis show positive premium on obtaining aforementioned grants on firm survival on short-run and output and performance additionality in mid-run. The chapter „Discussion“ is following chapter in which the problems encountered in this research are described, and the results obtained are discussed. The paper ends with the chapter „Conclusions“ in which the results of the research are discussed and related to the acceptance or refutation of the set hypotheses. The scientific contribution of this paper is evident in the verification of the applicability of scientific methods over companies in the Republic of Croatia, and this is, according to the authors, the first study to investigate the effect of SAPARD and IPARD aid at the micro level.