The boundary between specific work and mandate is difficult to be clearly determined

09.06.2016 Publications

 The basic regulations contained in the Civil Code describing the structure of various types of contracts have remained unchanged for decades, and at first glance they seem to be clear. A contract for specific work is the result of an agreement, in which the party undertaking the order obliges to perform a specific work. In contrast, a contract of mandate and contract for providing services are agreements of due diligence in which the party undertaking an order is obligated to perform certain activities. Attention should be drawn to the different treatment of different types of contracts in the regulations on social insurance. As a rule, a contract for specific work, as opposed to contracts of mandate/provision of services, does not entitle to social insurance. Thus, the ordering party, having a choice of two contracts, will seek to conclude the one which involves lower costs in the form of social insurance contributions (this was even connected with a creative description of activities). On the other hand, ZUS (Polish national insurance company) questions the mass conclusion of contracts for specific work and qualifies them as contracts of mandate/provision of services.


Observing the above practice, one can be tempted to state that in many cases the traditional understanding of a mandate and specific work is reevaluated, and even qualified above all due to social insurance regulations. The analysis of specific court cases indicates that courts often come to very interesting conclusions. For example: “in cleaning the effect is not important, but the cleaning itself”. This was acknowledged for instance by the Gdańsk Court of Appeal, stating that “there is no possibility of subjecting the effects of work of the party concerned to control in terms of achieving a specific, individual result. It is not possible to verify the status in the form of cleaning certain spaces on the basis of the metric units or by comparison with the existing model, using plans, drawings or by description” (ref. no. Act III AUa 1110/12).

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