Abstract. The investigation results of physical and mechanical properties of carbon fibre and carbon fibrereinforced plastics are presented. It is shown that the number of paramagnetic centres, which were determined by electron paramagnetic resonance method, were used as an index to define the chemical activity of the carbon fibre relative to the matrix. The number of paramagnetic centres in the carbon fibres and CFRP were analysed. The interlayers shear strength of CFRP based on epoxy resin was investigated.Applications of carbon fibre-reinforced plastics structural products for various purposes are expanding every year due to their unique complex of strength and thermal properties [1,2] and as well as the development of new moulding technologies [3][4][5].It was shown in the paper [3] that oxygen-containing functional groups with the different chemical composition and stability are present on the surface of carbon fibres, which largely determine the magnitude of the adhesive interaction of the fibre-matrix pair.Some of the functional groups are in ionized form, forming carboxylate ions. Depending on storage conditions, they are capable of hydrolysing according to various schemes, which leads to an increase (or decrease) in the reactivity of carbon fibres. It is quite difficult to quantitatively determine the concentration of oxygencontaining functional groups on the surface of carbon fibres, but it is possible to estimate experimentally the number of paramagnetic centres on the fibre and in CFRP, which also characterize their chemical activity.The aim of this paper is to determine the number of paramagnetic centres on the fibre and in CFRP, depending on the carbon fibre processing technology.