As of 1 July 2021, an amendment to the National Court Register Act[1] took effect, aimed at reducing the level of bureaucracy involved in running a business in Poland.

The amendment is the next step in the digitization of court registration procedures. It concerns registration procedures in the register of entrepreneurs of the National Court Register. As of 1 July 2021, filings made with the National Court Register for registration or for a change to registered details may only be made by the entrepreneurs by using the ICT system on the Court Register Website. It is now no longer possible to file applications intended for instance to register an amendment to a company’s articles of association, changes to managing bodies, or an increase in the share capital on printed forms.

When an application for registration in the register of entrepreneurs of the National Court Register is submitted electronically, it has to be signed by the person making the filing using a qualified electronic signature or a trusted profile on the Electronic Platform of Services of the Public Administration (ePUAP), or bear a personal signature, which is a form of electronic signature assigned to an e-identity card. The application may be signed by persons authorized to represent the business undertaking, or a professional representative who is an attorney-at-law.

Attachments also have to be in electronic form. If the original of a document is a hard copy, a digital copy has to be provided with the application. The digital copy may be certified as a genuine representation of the original by a professional representative, otherwise the original or an officially certified copy of the document has to be submitted to the court as a hard copy within three days of the application being filed. Meanwhile, there is no requirement to submit attachments executed in the form of the notary deed. Instead, the number under which the notarial deed in question is registered in the Central Repository of Electronic Copies of Notarial Authentic Documents has to be given. This change to the law means that businesses bear lower costs for additional copies of notarial deeds that have to be submitted with an application for registration in the National Court Register.

The compulsory digital registration procedure is applicable to all legal persons conducting business activity that have to be registered in the register of entrepreneurs of the National Court Register, in particular limited liability companies, joint-stock companies, and limited partnerships (spółki z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością, spółki akcyjna, spółki komandytowa). This should help to streamline the registry court filing procedure and reduce the related costs, especially costs of copies of notarial deeds.

[1] Act of 26 January 2018 amending the National Court Register Act and certain other acts (Journal of Laws item 398 as amended).