| In Principle

A draft Act Amending the Waste Act and Certain Other Acts has been submitted to the Polish parliament. The proposal is designed to totally digitise the Database of Products, Packaging and Waste Management (known as the Waste Database or BDO). The proponents’ aim is also to expand the functionality of BDO so that it is also used by businesses to maintain their current waste records. This would allow the authorities to easily identify the generator and subsequent possessors of wastes.

If a contractor does not agree to extension of the binding period of its offer when requested by the contracting authority, the bid is rejected. However, the effects of expiration of the binding period are unclear when the contractor fails to extend the period at its own initiative. The current wording of the Public Procurement Law does not specify whether the contractor’s bid remains valid after the binding period expires.

There have been few transactions on the pharmacy market in Poland since 25 June 2017, when the amendment to the Pharmaceutical Law popularly known as “Pharmacies for Pharmacists” entered into force. The transactions that did occur carried significant regulatory risk. This situation may change due to a recent interpretation by the Ministry of Health. Will we witness a gradual departure from the restrictive limitations under the 2017 amendment?

Genuine contractual disputes are always at least in some way about a gap in a contract. A dispute most often arises when parties have agreed to a meticulously drawn-up set of specific provisions and then in the course of performance a situation occurs which is not adequately addressed by those provisions. That is because the parties did not really have the situation in mind when drawing up the contract. As a result, the situation is either not addressed at all, or, more often, falls under provisions that were not really meant to deal with it.

Art. 647¹ of the Civil Code, providing for the investor’s secondary liability for the contractor’s debts to subcontractors, was introduced into the Polish legal system in 2003. In April 2017, the parliament amended it thoroughly in adopting the Act Amending Certain Acts to Facilitate Debt Recovery. Two years after implementation, we try to answer the question whether the title of the amending act corresponds to reality and subcontractors really have a better chance of receiving payment for their work.

Art. 6491–6495 of the Civil Code is intended to ensure that the security in the form of a payment guarantee for construction works provided at the investor’s request secures timely payment of the contractor’s fee. However, one may suspect that in practice this instrument is used for a completely different purpose.

The parliament has granted subcontractors a high level of protection. The provisions on joint and several liability are strict for the investor and often in practice mean a risk of double payment for the same thing: the first time to the general contractor and the second time to the subcontractor. Therefore, the investor should be able to recover from the general contractor the sums paid directly to subcontractors.

The Public Procurement Law provides for rules autonomous from the Civil Code for settlements with subcontractors. The regulations apply independently of each other, but they are applied in parallel to contracts concluded under the public procurement regime.

Od czasu wprowadzenia do Kodeksu cywilnego, a później również do Prawa zamówień publicznych, przepisów o solidarnej odpowiedzialności inwestora za zapłatę należną podwykonawcom robót budowlanych, generalni wykonawcy znajdują się w swoistym potrzasku – między koniecznością nadzoru i dyscyplinowania podwykonawców a presją inwestora, by ich rozliczać.

A term that’s been crunched recently by lawyers and economists in Europe and throughout the world is the Uberisation of work. This refers to the phenomenon in the modern economy where members of various professions don’t work for employers as such but provide services to clients as independent contractors via a range of online platforms. The term takes its name from the well-known ride-hailing app, but similar platforms function in other industries.

Tardiness in investigations and court cases is a structural problem in Poland. This was confirmed among other things in a pilot judgment issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of 7 July 2015 in Rutkowski and Others v. Poland. This is also confirmed by Ministry of Justice statistics. In 2018, the number of investigations of a duration of between two and five years was up 583 on 2017. Tardiness can occur in particular in complex criminal cases with a commercial element, and for this reason the problem of tardiness will probably affect corporate liability cases conducted once a law now before parliament takes effect. Based on the current wording, the question arises of who will be able to file a complaint concerning tardiness in cases of this kind, and when.

Compliance programmes are gaining in popularity, in particular in the context of a draft of a new corporate criminal liability act, as a defence precisely against this liability. Primarily, however, compliance should be a tool for ensuring that an organisation functions properly, especially as the number of regulatory requirements is on the rise. To fulfil both functions, a compliance programme must be effective.