| In Principle

The Baltic Sea is undergoing an economic rebirth. Seaborne trade and offshore wind energy are driving a new wave of activity for the Polish shipyard industry. More and more shipbuilding contracts are being signed with Polish shipyards or governed by Polish law. This makes it increasingly relevant to examine the standard forms on which these contracts are based—and the legal and business consequences flowing from the choice of a particular form.

On 14 May 2026 a seven-judge panel of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Poland issued a resolution in case no. III CZP 25/25 holding that the amount of damages for improper performance of a contract for construction works cannot automatically be equated to the expenditures necessary to cure defects in the construction. The issue arose in a dispute between companies over recovery of costs for repair of a building’s thermal insulation.

Shared-services centres functioning within a group may formally have the status of an “obliged entity” under anti money laundering and countering financing of terrorism regulations, even though the AML/CFT risk associated with their operation is minimal in practice. Is there any chance that the EU’s AMLR, which enters into force on 10 July 2027, can change this situation?

Last September we reported on proposed amendments to the Environmental Protection Law. The changes were designed to allow ecological organisations and other stakeholders to effectively challenge air quality programmes throughout Poland. Ultimately the proposal was not adopted, but a new version of the proposal was recently released.

The deadline for filing a complaint against the EU-Mercosur agreement with the Court of Justice was 26 May 2026. Poland was the only member state to exercise this option. Thus there are currently two separate cases before the Court of Justice: one initiated by the European Parliament seeking an opinion (Avis 1/26) and the complaint filed by Poland.

The advocate general has submitted her opinion to the Court of Justice of the European Union in case C-203/25, concerning the Lithuanian company Neo Group UAB and its dispute with the national tax authority. The opinion examines several new aspects that may be relevant in cases involving the exemption of dividends from withholding tax.

In early May the Polish Ministry of Finance presented a bill to amend the Tax Ordinance to introduce a long-awaited institution: settlement of tax disputes. According to the aims of the proposal, the new solution should reduce the number and the costs of handling tax disputes, by allowing taxpayers and tax authorities to resolve the dispute earlier and amicably, before litigation commences in the courts. But the proposal in its current form raises issues whether it will provide real room for compromise between the parties.

On 27 April 2026 the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) reported the suspected manipulation of the prices of financial instruments and exploitation of inside information in the trading of shares of three listed companies, submitting to law enforcement authorities a notice of suspicion of commission of criminal offences. This event provides an occasion to reflect on the scope of protection of D&O insurance held by members of the corporate authorities of public companies in analogous situations.

Can you lose a tender for hundreds of millions of euros because of a single subcontractor? Or more precisely, due to a subcontractor’s structure and sources of financing? This is an entirely realistic scenario under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation. The case of the Lisbon Metro’s Violet Line shows that even if a distortion of competition is found, the bid does not automatically have to be discarded. But it may require a major change in the entities involved in the bid. 

On 4 December 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its judgment in the joined cases C-580/23 (Mio AB v Galleri Mikael & Thomas Asplund AB) and C-795/23 (USM U. Schärer Söhne AG v konektra GmbH). Following the judgments in C-683/17, Cofemel, and C-833/18, Brompton Bicycle, this is another major step in shaping a uniform standard across the EU for copyright protection of designs. The court clarified the methodology for assessing the originality of utilititarian objects, and also sought to resolve the relationship between protection of industrial designs and copyright protection, and to clarify the rules for evaluating infringement of copyrights to designs.

Lack of an individual certificate of conversion of perpetual usufruct of residential land in Warsaw into ownership cannot block entry of the right of ownership in the land and mortgage register, the Supreme Court of Poland held in its groundbreaking order of 23 January 2026 (case no. II CSKP 705/25).

Legislative work on transposing the CRD VI directive into Polish law is entering a decisive phase. The new regulations will bring about a fundamental reform of many aspects of how banks operate. However, the directive’s impact on the operations in Poland of banks from outside the European Union and on cross-border lending transactions involving them may prove to be a real revolution.