Poland’s sweeping Act on the Conditions for Entrusting Work to Foreigners officially gained teeth on 1 December as a series of executive decrees took effect, regional authorities confirmed in a 4 December legal bulletin. The rules lock in higher state fees, the slimmer nationality list for the declaration procedure, and—most notably—the abolition of the labour-market test that previously forced employers to advertise jobs locally before hiring abroad.
Voivodeship governors may now publish “negative lists” of protected occupations where foreign hiring is barred, giving regions flexibility to shield local labour markets. The decrees also spell out a mandatory document pack for every electronic filing on praca.gov.pl: full-colour passport scans, sworn translations, signed contracts and, for staffing agencies, user-company agreements. Any omission triggers automatic electronic rejection.
![Executive Rules Activate Poland’s New Foreign-Worker Act, Abolish Labour-Market Test]()
For HR and mobility teams the learning curve is steep. Companies must map job codes to see whether a position appears on a negative list, budget for the higher fees, and train staff on the revised e-filing portal. Immigration counsel recommend pre-filing audits and weekly monitoring of provincial bulletins to avoid last-minute surprises.
Strategically, the abolition of the labour-market test could accelerate hiring for high-skill roles in IT and engineering—provided they are not protected—while the new fee structure and stricter compliance hurdles are expected to dampen demand for lower-skill roles.
Voivodeship governors may now publish “negative lists” of protected occupations where foreign hiring is barred, giving regions flexibility to shield local labour markets. The decrees also spell out a mandatory document pack for every electronic filing on praca.gov.pl: full-colour passport scans, sworn translations, signed contracts and, for staffing agencies, user-company agreements. Any omission triggers automatic electronic rejection.
For HR and mobility teams the learning curve is steep. Companies must map job codes to see whether a position appears on a negative list, budget for the higher fees, and train staff on the revised e-filing portal. Immigration counsel recommend pre-filing audits and weekly monitoring of provincial bulletins to avoid last-minute surprises.
Strategically, the abolition of the labour-market test could accelerate hiring for high-skill roles in IT and engineering—provided they are not protected—while the new fee structure and stricter compliance hurdles are expected to dampen demand for lower-skill roles.
