In order for the EU member state to make the best use of the EU funds available, as well as to reduce inequality between regions at the micro and macro level, it is necessary to approach the development of all the country's strategies very carefully. The regional development strategy of the Republic of Croatia should be based on detailed research and intensive partnership consultations at the regional and local level. Guided by the general goal of regional development policy, which is; to contribute to the socio-economic development of the Republic of Croatia, in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, by creating conditions that will enable all parts of the country to strengthen competitiveness and realize their own development potentials. The absorption of European Union funds is perceived by key stakeholders in the preparation and implementation of projects in the context of the number of project proposals that received co-financing from the European Commission, but also in the context of the quality of public management, without which prior co-financing cannot be achieved. The possibility of using EU funds is a consequence of the implementation of a preplanned set of activities and resources for the creation of strategic documents. Absorption capacities can thus be defined as a necessary and unavoidable prerequisite for the preparation and implementation of both strategic documents and EU funds. Precisely because of the causeand-effect relationship between the creation of strategic state documents and the successful use of funds from EU funds, in this work, in addition to research methods for the theoretical part of the work, a descriptive analysis of data obtained from primary sources (surveys) was carried out. Through the survey, a sample of 93 respondents investigated the opinion on the quality of the preparation of strategic documents and their importance in the form of EU funds