The Warsaw Stock Exchange facing a regulatory storm

July brings the coming into force of new European Union laws regulating the capital markets. In the specific case of Poland, they shall begin to apply after the summer holidays.

The general gist of the legislative amendments is defined by the EU regulation coming into force on 21 July. Faced with this necessity of adapting domestic law to the new EU rules, the Polish legislature decided to take the opportunity to implement a number of additional solutions. Yet effective coming into force of all these changes will take some more time, because the Sejm will not manage to address the various amendments before the parliamentary recess.

“The legislative amendments will cause a multi-faceted rearrangement of the very infrastructure of the capital market. Along with the changes required to adapt domestic law to EU law, a number of other changes will be implemented; these are motivated by various underlying objectives, but the general spirit runs towards increasing state supervision, closing loopholes, investor protection, and ensuring safety of market trading, this as a result of, among other factors, various scandals affecting the markets”, comments Krzysztof Marczuk, partner in GESSEL.

The legislature has effectuated a large number of corrections and adjustments already during the legislative process. Krzysztof Marczuk remarks that, given the sheer scope of the changes, nobody can be certain as to how market practice will proceed, but it is already obvious that the new rules will require much interpretation by the authorities charged with enforcing them.

Full text is available (in Polish) in Puls Biznesu (27.06.2019) and on www.pb.pl. If you are interested in an English-language version contact us: kontakt@gessel.pl