Group proceedings1 are a new mechanism for pursuing claims before the court, introduced into the Polish legal system by the Act of the 17th December 2009 on Pursuing Claims in Group Proceedings (Journal of Laws of 2010, No. 7, item 44); hereinafter referred to as: “UDRPG” or “Class Action Act”).
The Class Action Act entered into force on the 19th July 2010 and up to now has been amended four times to date. The first amendment was introduced by the Act of the 7th April 2017 Amending Certain Acts to Facilitate Debt Collection, which entered into force on the 1st June 2017 (hereinafter: “Amendment No. 1”). The next one – by the Act of the 4th July 2019 amending the Code of Civil Procedure and certain other acts, which in terms of the amendments to UDRPG entered into force partially on the 21st August 2019 and partially on the 7th November 2019, hereinafter referred to as “Amendment No. 2”) The next amendment was made by the means of the Act of the 1st December 2022, amending the Act on the Examination of Complaints by Financial Market Entities and on the Financial Ombudsman and certain other acts (hereinafter: “Amendment No. 3”), which in terms of amendments to UDRPG entered into force on the 16th March 2023. The last (very important) amendment was made by the Act of the 24th July 2024, amending UDRPG and certain other acts (hereinafter: “Amendment No. 4”), which in terms of changes to UDRPG entered into force on 29th August 2024. The Amendment No. 4 implements into the Polish legal system the Directive (EU) 2020/1828 of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU) 2020/1828 of the 25th November 2020 on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers and repealing the Directive 2009/22/EC – the so-called Directive on Representative Actions (hereinafter: “Directive 2020/1828” or “DRA”). The Amendment No. 4 introduced a new type of group proceedings that may only be brought by an authorized entity for the purpose of protecting the general interests of consumers (this type of group proceedings is a Polish version of a representative action). The changes described above are intended to ensure a high level of consumer protection and provide mechanisms facilitating the pursuit of claims by consumers throughout the European Union.
The current text of the UDRPG is available here.
The primary purpose of group proceedings is to facilitate in a single proceeding the pursuit of multiple individual claims that are similar in certain respects. The fundamental goal behind the introduction of this regulation was to increase the effectiveness of legal protection and provide an effective judicial path.
The Class Action Act regulates only procedural issues, i.e. it only specifies the procedure for hearing cases in group proceedings. For the matters non-regulated by the UDRPG, the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure apply in group proceedings accordingly. However, UDRPG does not affect the substantive legal basis of claims pursued collectively. Therefore, the relevant provisions of substantive law (e.g., the provisions of the Civil Code governing liability for damages) determine whether a given claim exists or not. The Class Action Act does not regulate the issue of the statute of limitations for claims, either.
1We use the term „group proceedings” and the term “class action” interchangeably.