On 25.04.2024 The European Union Court of Justice ruled, in the matter C – 147/23, that Poland failed to undertake the necessary measures to implement the so – called Whistleblowing EU – Directive. On the request of the European Commission Poland will be obliged to pay periodic penalties in the amount of 40 000 Euro per day and a single fine amounting to 7 Million Euro. It can be expected that the Polish legislator will endeavor to speed up the legislation process on this. The Council of Ministers has already approved a long awaited draft of the new whistleblowing act. Compared to previous draft legislations the new draft includes many modifications, for instance the Labour Department changed the previous wording of “persons claiming legal violations” to “whistle-blowers”. In addition, the catalogue of legal violations has been extended, among other things, by the following: violation of freedom and rights of an individual and of labour law. It has been stressed too that any whistle-blower shall be protected from the moment of launching the notification and the amount of seeking damages for retaliatory measures cannot be lower than the average monthly remuneration in the national economy in the previous year (around 7000 PLN). The provisions of the new law will take effect 3 months after its publication (previously the term of 1 month was foreseen) with the exemption of external notifications. The new legislation draft will be now submitted to the Polish Parliament for further discussions.
In April 2024 a new ordinance amending the former ordinance on assessing, classifying and promoting of pupils at public schools came into force. The new law introduces changes as to the scope of homework assigned to pupils, in particular the waiver of including grades in religion and ethics in the final evaluation. However, in the case of pupils at primary and secondary schools for adults the aforementioned amendment has not been introduced.
Furthermore in April 2024 new regulations of the act dated 12.04.2024 on changes to accounting and other acts were established. The purpose of this act is the implementation of the Directive (EU) 2021 /2101 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24.11.2021 amending Directive 2013/34/EU as regards disclosure of income tax information by certain undertakings and branches. The act obliges large multinational companies to publicly disclose information on income tax and other information related to income tax, broken down by country. The act also imposes that in a situation where the ultimate parent company is not subject to the regulations of EU Member States, this obligation will be imposed on their medium and large subsidiaries or branches operating on the territory of the Republic of Poland. The new bill will apply if the consolidated revenues of the ultimate parent company of the capital group or the revenues of an independent entity exceed 3.5 billion PLN in the two following years. In addition, the new bill imposes an obligation to publicly disclose an income tax report broken down by country. The data contained in the report will have to be disclosed separately for all EU countries where the company operates, as well as for tax jurisdictions that do not comply with good tax governance practices (so-called “tax havens”). For other tax jurisdictions, information will be presented in an aggregated form. It should be emphasized that the subsidiary will also be required to publish data on income tax when it does not receive a complete information package from the parent company. In such a case, in accordance with the bill, the subsidiary prepares, publishes and makes available a report on information on the parent company’s income tax, containing all the information it currently has and a statement that the ultimate parent company has not provided the necessary information. The following data shall in particular be included in the reports (1) the nature of the activities of all entities covered by reporting, (2) number of employees broken down by full-time equivalents (40h per week), (3) the amount of profit or loss before tax, (4) the amount of income tax due in a given country on profits made in the current year in that country, (5) revenues, including transactions with related entities, (6) the amount of income tax paid in a given country, including withholding tax, and (7) the amount of undistributed profit from previous years at the end of a given financial year. The new act shall apply to income tax reports for financial years beginning after 21.06.2024.
In April 2024 the Polish Civil Codes was amended by an act dated 20.03.2024 with regard to provisions of consumer loans and pawn shop consumer loans. The purpose of these amendments is directed at the repealing of some provisions and at strengthening the protection of consumers running farms in the meaning of article 6 item 4 of the act on social insurance of farmers dated 20.12.1990 within the scope of (1) application of abusive clauses, (2) granting loans on the basis of Article 7206 of the Civil Code, (3) granting loans on the basis of the consumer loan act dated 12.05.2011 and (4) granting loans on the basis of the act on pawnshop consumer loans.
Finally, new provisions on a change to the act on protection of health against effects of the use of tobacco and tobacco products entered into force. The aim of these changes is the possibility of trace & track of not excise tobacco products (for instance chewing tobacco or nasal tobacco). This system has been established on the basis of the EU Directive 2014/40/ OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 3.04. 2014 on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning the manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco. The directive lays down rules on the manufacture, presentation and sale of cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco, pipe tobacco, cigars, cigarillos, smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes and herbal products for smoking. Since 20.05.2019, the trace & track system stores data regarding the movement, orders, invoicing and payments for cigarettes and tobacco.
