Magdalena OsmędaAs of the 25th June 2023, Poland should be applying provisions implementing the Directive (EU) 2020/1828 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25th November 2020 on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers and repealing Directive 2009/22/EC (hereinafter: “Directive 2020/1828”). However, to date, the draft act implementing the Directive 2020/1828 has not even been submitted to Polish Sejm.
The deadline for implementing the Directive 2020/1828 expired on the 25th December 2022. This deadline was not met by the Polish legislator, as we previously reported in an earlier post where we also outlined the key assumptions of the draft act of the 6th December 2022 intended to be implementing the Directive 2020/1828. That draft is currently being worked on by the Government Legislative Centre (Draft Act implementing Directive 2020/1828 on representative actions).
Under the provisions of the Directive 2020/1828, the Member States were required to implement it by the 25th December 25 2022. In turn, the provisions implementing the Directive 2020/1828 should have been applied as of the 25th June 2023 with respect to infringements occurring on or after that date.
At present, the deadline has passed both for the implementation of the Directive 2020/1828 and the date on which the implementing provisions should have entered into force (even though the draft of the 6th December 2022 assumed that the act would enter into force on the 25th June 2023).
Despite the lapse of these deadlines, as of now the draft act implementing the Directive has not yet been submitted to the Sejm. According to publicly available information, works over the draft of the 6th December 2022 are still ongoing at the Government Legislation Centre; the draft includes the Act amending the Act on Pursuing Claims in Group Proceedings and certain other acts. The extended timeline for completing the draft is likely, as the original version of the draft has been the subject of an active debate during the public consultation process, with some of its provisions raising doubts and controversies.
On the website of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister it was indicated that the planned date for the Council of Ministers to adopt the draft act was the third quarter of 2023.
