The duties of a driver following an accident with a fatal result arise directly from Article 44(2) of the Act – Road Traffic Law: to provide the necessary assistance to the victims and to summon an emergency medical team and the Police.
The amendment of 17 October 2025 tightens this regime: loss of a driving licence is provided for, inter alia, following the commission of an offence against safety in transport or after exceeding the speed limit by more than 50 km/h in a built-up area.
The driver of a Volkswagen who, on 3 October 2026, fatally struck a 50-year-old pedestrian on Piłsudskiego Avenue in Nowy Sącz will not face charges of "road murder," as Polish law does not recognise such a classification — the resolution will lie between an ordinary road traffic accident and an offence against safety in transport. The decisive question will be whether the perpetrator entered the pedestrian crossing with a grossly inadequate speed, which determines classification under Article 177 § 2 of the Act of 6 June 1997 – Penal Code (an offence against safety in transport with a fatal result), rather than under Article 177 § 1. The thread of "racing" and deliberate recklessness referred to by residents may, however, substantiate the perpetrator's conditional intent (dolus eventualis), but the sources provided contain no provision introducing a distinct offence of "road murder" — discussion of an amendment to the Penal Code remains a postulate, not an applicable norm.
The duties of a driver following an accident with a fatal result arise directly from Article 44(2) of the Act – Road Traffic Law (consolidated text announced by the Marshal of the Sejm on 21 June 2024):
The preparatory proceedings will be conducted by the Police and resolved by a prosecutor; where classification is under Article 177 § 2 of the Penal Code, the court may impose a penal measure in the form of a driving ban, the lifting of which before the expiry of the imposed period is permissible only where the perpetrator's conduct and characteristics justify the conviction that further driving would not endanger safety in transport — as provided by the amendment of 20 March 2015 (which amended the provisions on driving bans; Article 182 § 1 of the Penal Code applied mutatis mutandis). In turn, the Act of 2 December 2021 amending the Act – Road Traffic Law (Article 19) requires the collection of data on persons who have committed offences under Articles 173, 174, 177, 178a or 355 of the Penal Code and the making of such data available through the system of the Insurance Guarantee Fund — a convicted driver will therefore appear in a register covering penalty points and a history of violations. Among the case law sources provided, the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal of 30 September 2015, case no. K 3/13, concerning Article 78(4) of the Road Traffic Law in conjunction with the Code of Procedure in Misdemeanour Cases, is available — it confirms the constitutional framework of liability for road traffic violations recorded automatically, although it does not directly resolve the classification of an accident with a fatal result.
Realistically, the case will proceed along one of two paths: either the prosecutor will present the driver with a charge under Article 177 § 2 of the Penal Code (unintentionally causing an accident with a fatal result at a pedestrian crossing), or — if conditional intent is established at a substantially exceeded speed — a more serious classification will be considered, although the sources contain no provision on "road murder," so such a classification would have to rest on existing offence types. For the deceased's family, the practical significance lies in the duty to compensate arising from the mandatory third-party liability insurance of the vehicle owner, referred to in Article 2 of the Road Traffic Law (a claim for damages by a person involved in the accident). For the residents of the Browarna estate, a realistic avenue is submissions to the manager of national road no. 75 for reconstruction of the intersection, additional speed cameras or speed bumps — the decision rests with the road management authority, not the Police. The point to monitor is the prosecutor's first decision in the case — whether the driver will be charged under Article 177 § 2 of the Penal Code, and whether the court will, as a precautionary measure, secure a driving ban for the duration of the proceedings.
Art. 5 of the Act on the Status of Judges of the Constitutional Tribunal provides that a judge's employment relationship is established only upon the taking of the oath, and that a judge, having taken the oath, must promptly report to the Tribunal to assume their duties.
Maciej Berek, elected by the Sejm on 4 September 2026 as a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal, remains outside of office because he has not taken the oath — and it is the oath, not the election itself, that triggers the status of judge. The dispute concerns whether the President is obliged to administer the oath, or whether he may condition its administration on an assessment of whether formal requirements have been met, in particular the ten-year period of practising as a legal counsel (radca prawny). The resolution will be based on the Act on the Status of Judges of the Constitutional Tribunal (Art. 4 and Art. 5) and on the Constitution, which entrusts the election of judges to the Sejm and the administration of the oath to the President.
Under Art. 4(1) of the Act on the Status of Judges of the Constitutional Tribunal, a person elected to the office of judge takes an oath before the President of the Republic of Poland, in the wording specified in that provision. Art. 5 of the Act provides that a judge's employment relationship is established only upon the taking of the oath, and that a judge, having taken the oath, must promptly report to the Tribunal to assume their duties. A refusal by the elected person to take the oath is equivalent to a renunciation of the office (Art. 4(2)), but the provisions do not confer on the President any competence to refuse to administer it — a point confirmed by the position of Prof. Marek Chmaj: the President is obliged to invite the judge to take the oath and has no competence to refuse, and should no invitation be extended, the judge may take the oath before the Office of the President, orally or in writing. Verification of whether a candidate meets the requirements falls within the competence of the Sejm, which makes the election. Art. 18 of the Implementing Act further indicates the practical consequence of the absence of an oath: the judge acting as President of the Constitutional Tribunal assigns cases only to judges who have taken the oath before the President, so Berek, without an oath, could not participate in adjudication or in the procedure for selecting candidates for President of the Tribunal (Art. 21(2) of the Implementing Act restricts participation in the sitting of the General Assembly to judges who have taken the oath).
The realistic scenarios are as follows:
For Berek, the key point is that without the oath he cannot adjudicate or participate in the work of the General Assembly; for the President, the key point is that no source identifies any provision granting him the right to refuse.
Correction. [TIKSLINIMAS
For land granted in perpetual usufruct after the new provisions enter into force, preferential rates have been provided: an annual fee of 0.3% of the land price, and an initial fee not exceeding 10% of the property price — for social housing construction and student dormitories.
Approximately 100,000 holders of cooperative rights to premises and 120 housing cooperatives may obtain a permanent legal title to the land on which their buildings have stood for decades — without such title, they could not freely dispose of the premises or establish separate ownership. On 6 October 2026, the Council of Ministers will consider a draft act on regulating rights to land developed by housing cooperatives, amending the Act on Real Estate Management and certain other acts, prepared by the Ministry of Development and Technology. The crux of the matter is the regulation of the legal status of land that cooperatives acquired in the Polish People's Republic and after 1989 from the State or municipalities in the form of perpetual usufruct — which precluded acquisitive prescription and the transfer of ownership under the Civil Code. The problem concerns primarily Warsaw, where land covered by the Decree of 26 October 1945 on the Ownership and Use of Land in the Area of the Capital City of Warsaw remained without permanent regulation. The draft also provides for the abolition of the general prohibition on establishing perpetual usufruct for residential purposes, restoring the legal status as it stood before 1 January 2019, when the act on the transformation of perpetual usufruct of land developed for residential purposes into ownership entered into force.
The current legal system already contains partial regulation mechanisms on which the draft builds. Under the Act on Housing Cooperatives (Art. 35(1¹–1³), consolidated text of 12 June 2026), a cooperative may demand the acquisition of ownership of plots held by it in perpetual usufruct and, where the land has been granted in perpetual usufruct to another person, demand the transfer of that right for remuneration; Arts. 69 and 69a of the Act on Real Estate Management apply accordingly. In turn, the Act of 18 December 2009 amending the Act on Housing Cooperatives (Art. 4(3)) provides a procedure for situations where a cooperative holds neither ownership nor perpetual usufruct of the land on which it erected a building, or where the property has an unregulated legal status within the meaning of Art. 113(6) of the Act on Real Estate Management — but applications for the transformation of cooperative ownership rights to premises were left unexamined in such cases. The draft is intended to close this gap by supplementing the catalogue of grounds for refusal to grant Warsaw decree land in perpetual usufruct to former owners — so that "the obstacle to regulating the legal status of the land by reason of claims asserted ceases to exist." In addition, properties encumbered with cooperative ownership rights to premises have been included in the resources of the State Treasury and local government, and it will become possible to revoke a decision on the gratuitous transfer of a property where it is used inconsistently with its designated purpose.
Once the act enters into force, its practical effects will be distributed across three groups of entities:
Will entrepreneurs face sanctions for errors in invoices issued in the National e-Invoice System (KSeF), or will the mandatory penalty regime remain deferred until 2028?
The report indicates that the Ministry of Finance has published a draft act deferring penalties for KSeF errors until 2028, with the largest companies required to issue invoices in the system from 1 February 2026, and all other entrepreneurs from 1 April 2026. I do not have direct access to the text of this draft or of the amended statute, so I rely here on the general principle of tax law: tax sanctions (including additional penalties and liability for breaches of public finance discipline) may be imposed solely on the basis of a provision in force at the time of the act, and a penalty-free transitional period is a deliberate legislative decision to tolerate implementation errors in exchange for mass adoption of mandatory e-invoicing.
In practice, this means that until 2028 an error in a corrective invoice (which, according to the Exorigo-Upos analysis, affects every fifth invoice) does not give rise to an immediate penalty, but it does not relieve the taxpayer of the obligation to correct the document, nor of the risk that the VAT deduction will be challenged where the erroneous invoice was used for settlement — the argument that "penalties are deferred" does not protect the right to deduct or the counterparty's settlements. There is also the risk of the opposite interpretation: companies that postpone the automation of invoice-related processes (acceptance, booking, month-end closing — which, according to KPMG and Payhawk, most of the market still performs manually) will, once the penalty regime enters into force in 2028, have no developed procedures in place. It is therefore advisable to document the invoice acceptance and allocation process now, so that after 2028 organisational due diligence can be demonstrated.
Disclaimer: since I do not have the text of the draft act, the scope of the deferral (which penalties and which breaches it covers) must be verified against the Ministry of Finance's publication and cannot be extended to other tax sanctions.
Orlen has provisionally estimated its liability under this tax at PLN 2 billion for the period from March to August 2026, which demonstrates the real scale of the burden on the sector.
Exceeding the 55% of GDP threshold will trigger the obligation of a remedial plan for the future government, and according to the assessment of Tomasz Prusak of the Friendly Country Foundation, the threshold may be breached as early as next year.
Fuel concerns, including Orlen, have simultaneously come within the scope of two instruments: the announcement of maximum fuel prices and the act on the tax on excess profits of fuel companies, which the President signed and published in the Journal of Laws last Thursday. At the same time, the President has referred the excess profits act to the Constitutional Tribunal under ex post review, so the tax is already in fact in force, but its constitutionality remains an open question. The legal issue therefore concerns the legality and effects of administrative price caps on fuels and the taxation of excess profits, to be resolved under the Act of 16 February 2007 on crude oil, petroleum product and natural gas stocks and on the rules of procedure in situations of threat to the state's fuel security and disturbances on the petroleum market, as well as under the new act on the tax on excess profits. The second thread — the exceedance of the statutory public debt limit of 55% of GDP and the remedial plan — belongs to a separate sphere of public finance and, according to Minister Domański, may occur in two years, although experts point to the risk already next year.
The maximum fuel price mechanism is the third instalment of the "Fuel Prices Lower" package and fits within a legislative line documented by the sources in the field of energy and fuel law. The Act of 19 July 2019 amending the Act on crude oil stocks (Art. 1) regulates, inter alia, the rules for determining fuel yield coefficients by crude oil refiners, including the possibility of taking into account the production of other companies within a single capital group within the meaning of Art. 3(1)(44) of the Accounting Act — it is precisely this capital group construct that also appears in the Act of 29 May 2026 amending the Crisis Management Act (Art. 28^a), which defines the special powers of the minister responsible for state assets in companies in the energy, crude oil and gaseous fuels sector. For producers, this entails the obligation to keep separate records of costs and revenues for the activity covered by the regulation, following the pattern of Art. 23 of the Act of 4 March 2005 amending the Act — Energy Law, which requires separate calculation of costs, revenues, profits and losses for each type of activity. In fuel trading, entities also remain subject to the licensing regime and the register of intervention stocks — the requirement to hold a licence for trading in liquid fuels with foreign countries or to be entered in the register of the intervention stock system is confirmed by Art. 5 of the Act of 7 July 2016 amending the Act on Goods and Services Tax, and Art. 78a of that act prohibits a taxpayer from intra-Community acquisition of motor fuels on behalf of another entity. Among the sources provided there is no case law of the Constitutional Tribunal or the courts concerning windfall taxes or maximum fuel prices, so no precedent can be cited; the only pending proceeding is the ex post review of the excess profits act before the Constitutional Tribunal, initiated by the President. Prof. Balcerowicz's criticism is of an evaluative nature and does not prejudge the outcome of the constitutional review.
The nearest practical effect for stations and drivers is the application of maximum fuel prices on the terms of the CPN package, and for fuel companies — the creation of a tax liability which Orlen has provisionally valued at PLN 2 billion for the period from March to August 2026. For the sector, the real risks are: