In the New Year, companies face good legal changes as well as bad ones

Of the businesspeople polled by the Business Centre Club, no less than 97.7% believe that the Polish government did not improve the business environment in 2019. Thus, the proportion of entrepreneurs dissatisfied with the conditions for pursuing business operations in Poland has grown by almost 10% since the year before. The next study may well paint a similar picture in that, although the Polish government has now provided for a considerable number of facilitations, it has also enacted new powers for public agencies, including the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), which may be onerous especially for the big companies. Moreover, the Polish authorities persist in their habit of dashing off legislation at the last moment.

“This past year has been a difficult one for business”, opines Marek Goliszewski, president of the Business Centre Club. Why ?  In his assessment, the sheer volume of legislative changes has produced a situation where, once again, business leaders, rather than concentrating on the substance of their work, had to wrap their brains around the new regulations and ensure that their companies are in compliance. As a result, no less than 97.7% of the polled enterprises believe that the government did not improve the conditions for doing business in 2019 (up from 88.9% of those polled the year before). In like spirit, the proportion of those who believe that Poland will not have a business-friendly climate rose from 75.6% to 95.2%. Despite this grim mood, however, the proportion of those who regard frequent amendments of applicable laws as a problem has dropped from 69% to 65.1%. The poll was commissioned by BCC and was conducted in early December on a sample of 600 large, medium-sized, and small or micro companies (49%, 35%, and 16%, respectively). By all indications, the Ministry of Development (formerly of Entrepreneurship), for all its efforts, cannot hope for a more favourable assessment by the business community.

As of 1 January, many Polish companies must address not only the increase of the minimum wage, but also new modules of the wastes data base, new laws intended to counteract payment backlogs, implementation of employee capital plans, and mandatory dematerialisation of shares (…)

The full text of this article is available (in Polish) on www.prawo.pl. If you are interested in an English-language version or in discussing the issues raised herein with one of our lawyers, please contact: kontakt@gessel.pl