Poland’s long-awaited executive acts that give teeth to the new Act on the Conditions for Entrusting Work to Foreigners became enforceable nationwide on 1 December and are already being applied by regional authorities, according to a detailed Legal Alert issued by the Wielkopolska Province Office on 4 December.
The guidance consolidates multiple regulations passed on 20–21 November. Beyond confirming steep fee increases and the narrower list of eligible nationalities for the declaration procedure, the alert codifies when foreigners may work without any permit—ranging from short-term EU aid projects to specialised defence-sector tasks, each capped at 30 days per calendar year.
![Executive rules underpinning Poland’s new foreign-worker law now in force]()
For the first time employers have an exhaustive checklist of documents that must accompany every electronic filing on the praca.gov.pl portal. These include full colour scans of every passport page, sworn translations, employment contracts and, for agencies, tripartite user-agreement originals. Any missing file triggers an automatic electronic rejection.
The rules also operationalise the abolition of the labour-market test: voivodeship governors may now publish “negative lists” of protected occupations where foreign hiring is barred. HR teams are therefore advised to monitor regional bulletins weekly.
Companies that fail to adapt quickly risk processing delays that could ground new assignees in January. Immigration counsel recommend pre-filing audits and early budgeting for the higher fees.
The guidance consolidates multiple regulations passed on 20–21 November. Beyond confirming steep fee increases and the narrower list of eligible nationalities for the declaration procedure, the alert codifies when foreigners may work without any permit—ranging from short-term EU aid projects to specialised defence-sector tasks, each capped at 30 days per calendar year.
For the first time employers have an exhaustive checklist of documents that must accompany every electronic filing on the praca.gov.pl portal. These include full colour scans of every passport page, sworn translations, employment contracts and, for agencies, tripartite user-agreement originals. Any missing file triggers an automatic electronic rejection.
The rules also operationalise the abolition of the labour-market test: voivodeship governors may now publish “negative lists” of protected occupations where foreign hiring is barred. HR teams are therefore advised to monitor regional bulletins weekly.
Companies that fail to adapt quickly risk processing delays that could ground new assignees in January. Immigration counsel recommend pre-filing audits and early budgeting for the higher fees.
