Who Makes the Law in Poland?

In Poland, the rule in front of you was made at one of four levels: by the national parliament (the Sejm), by a government minister, or by one of three tiers of local self-government. Those tiers are your gmina (municipality), powiat (county), and województwo (voivodeship). When two rules clash, the higher one wins, and a local rule that breaks a national statute is void from the start. This page explains who makes each kind of law, why the rules can legitimately differ from one town to the next, and what you can do when a local rule is unlawful.

The short answer: who makes the rule, and who wins

Poland has four kinds of body that make binding, generally applicable law:

• The national parliament (the Sejm, with the Senat) passes statutes, or ustawy (acts of parliament).
• Government ministers and the Council of Ministers issue rozporządzenia (regulations) to fill in the detail of those statutes.
• The three tiers of local self-government (the gmina, the powiat, and the województwo) each issue akty prawa miejscowego (acts of local law).

Local law is real law. An akt prawa miejscowego is universally binding: it applies to everyone, not just the council that passed it. But it binds only inside that body’s own borders, and only inside the box a national statute has already drawn for it.

So there are two answers to the two-part question. Who made the rule? It could be any of the four. Which one wins in a conflict? The higher one, always: a local act that conflicts with a statute is void (Article 91 of the Local Government Act of 8 March 1990).

The hierarchy of Polish law, from the Constitution down

Article 87 of the Polish Constitution (the Constitution of 2 April 1997) lists the sources of universally binding law in a fixed order. Every lower rank must conform to every higher one; where a lower act conflicts with a higher one, the lower act gives way.

1. The Constitution, the supreme law of Poland (Article 8).
2. Ratified international agreements, including the European Union treaties (Article 91; see the EU section below).
3. Statutes (ustawy), passed by the Sejm and Senat.
4. Regulations (rozporządzenia), issued by ministers and the Council of Ministers, only on the basis of, and within the limits of, a specific statute.
5. Acts of local law (akty prawa miejscowego), issued by local self-government and by central-government bodies in the regions, binding only within the area they govern.

Two principles hold this stack together:

• Legalism (Article 7). Every public authority acts “on the basis of, and within the limits of, the law” (na podstawie i w granicach prawa). A council cannot regulate something just because it wants to; it needs a statute that authorises it.
• Publication (Article 88). A rule does not bind until it is officially published. For local law, that means publication in the wojewódzki dziennik urzędowy (the regional official gazette). Until then it has no legal force.

Who makes what: gmina, powiat and województwo

The three tiers of samorząd terytorialny (local self-government) each have an elected council that makes local law for its own area. They are not a chain of command: a powiat does not sit above its gminy and cannot overrule them. Each tier has its own tasks, assigned by statute.

At municipal level, the council (rada gminy) makes local law by resolution (uchwała), under Article 40 of the Local Government Act of 8 March 1990 (ustawa o samorządzie gminnym). In an emergency, the mayor (the wójt in a rural municipality, burmistrz in a town, or prezydent in a city) can issue urgent public-order rules (przepisy porządkowe) by order (zarządzenie), which the council must then ratify. The powiat council legislates the same way under the County Government Act of 5 June 1998 (its public-order rules sit in Article 41), and the regional assembly (sejmik województwa) under the Voivodeship Government Act of 5 June 1998 (Article 89). Poland has 16 województwa; a gmina’s rule binds only inside that gmina, and a powiat’s only inside that powiat.

In practice, almost all the local law you will personally run into is made by your gmina. The powiat and województwo issue local law too, but you meet it far less often day to day. The biggest cities are a special case, where one council does two jobs at once, which this page explains at the end.

Why the rules are different in the next town

Because the system is built to produce different rules. A national statute draws the box. It sets the framework, the limits, and often a ceiling, then leaves the gmina to fill in the details for its own area. Two neighbouring towns working from the very same statute can end up with different rules, and both are entirely lawful. The difference is the design working as intended, not an error or an oversight.

The clearest way to see this is through the everyday rules that are themselves akty prawa miejscowego. The next section walks through the ones expats and residents hit most often.

Akty prawa miejscowego: the everyday rules that differ by town

Most of the local rules you actually deal with are akty prawa miejscowego. Here are five you are most likely to meet, each one a genuine act of local law passed by your gmina.

Zoning: the plan ogólny and local plans (MPZP)

Status: in force; deadline 31 August 2026.

What you are allowed to build on a given plot is decided by your gmina, through its spatial-planning documents. A reform now under way makes this the cleanest example of the whole system: a national statute is forcing every municipality in the country to pass a new act of local law.

Until recently each gmina had a studium (a planning “study” of conditions and directions), but the studium was not local law and did not bind residents directly. The reform abolishes the studium and replaces it with a digital plan ogólny gminy (general municipal plan, often shortened to POG), which the municipal council adopts and which expressly carries the status of an akt prawa miejscowego. Every gmina, roughly 2,477 of them, has to adopt one.

The legal basis is the Spatial Planning and Development Act of 27 March 2003 (ustawa o planowaniu i zagospodarowaniu przestrzennym), as amended by the act of 7 July 2023. The deadline has already moved twice: from 31 December 2025 to 30 June 2026 and then to 31 August 2026, most recently by an amendment of 30 April 2026 signed by President Karol Nawrocki.

What this means on the ground: because each gmina adopts its plan ogólny on its own timetable, the rules for a specific plot depend on whether your municipality has passed its plan yet. You can track progress in the national register at rejestrplanowogolnych.pl and on the Geoportal Krajowy. As of June 2026 the 31 August 2026 deadline is still the law, but it is politically contested. Rural municipalities in particular are struggling to draft their plans, and there has been lobbying to push the date further out, so confirm the current deadline rather than assuming it holds.

Alongside the plan ogólny, many gminy also have a miejscowy plan zagospodarowania przestrzennego (MPZP) for specific areas: a detailed local development plan that is itself an act of local law. Where an MPZP exists, it directly governs what can be built there.

Building conditions (warunki zabudowy): the new five-year limit

Status: in force from 1 January 2026.

If your plot is not covered by a local plan, building is governed instead by a decyzja o warunkach zabudowy, a warunki zabudowy (WZ) decision, which sets the conditions for what you may build. The rules for these decisions changed on 1 January 2026.

The headline change: a WZ decision issued under the new rules expires five years after it becomes final. The open-ended WZ, valid indefinitely, is gone for new decisions.

Two transitional points matter if you are mid-process:

• Acquired rights. A WZ stays open-ended if you filed the application by 15 October 2025, or the decision became final by 31 December 2025.
• Plan conflicts. A WZ issued up to 31 August 2026 remains valid even if your gmina’s later plan ogólny conflicts with it.

Two further new rules:

• From 1 January 2026, a WZ is issued only to someone who has the right to use the land for building. You can no longer obtain a speculative WZ on land you do not control.
• Once a gmina’s plan ogólny is in force, a WZ can generally be issued only inside the areas of infill development (obszary uzupełnienia zabudowy, OUZ) that the plan marks out.

These are national statutory rules, but again, the outcome on your specific plot is set by your gmina’s local plan.

Night-time alcohol sales (nocna prohibicja)

Status: in force and spreading.

Whether you can buy alcohol from a shop at 2 a.m. depends entirely on your gmina. This is the textbook case of one national statute producing opposite results from one town to the next.

Since 2018, Article 12(4) of the Sobriety and Alcoholism Prevention Act of 26 October 1982 (ustawa o wychowaniu w trzeźwości i przeciwdziałaniu alkoholizmowi) lets a municipal council decide, by resolution, to restrict off-premise night-time alcohol sales between 22:00 and 06:00. The statute sets the window; each gmina chooses whether to use it.

As of June 2026:

• Warsaw introduced a citywide ban that took effect on 1 June 2026 (resolution of 12 March 2026, passed 57 votes to 2). It runs from 22:00 to 06:00 and covers shops and petrol stations, but not bars and restaurants, with the sole exception of duty-free sales at Chopin Airport. A pilot had run in the Śródmieście and Praga-Północ districts from 1 November 2025.
• Kraków has had a night-time ban since 1 July 2023.
• More than 176 municipalities had a ban by 2024, with around 30 more, including large cities, since.

The bans can be very local: the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny, NSA) has confirmed that a gmina may restrict night sales in just a single osiedle (housing estate) rather than the whole town. The rule really can change from one neighbourhood to the next.

Local property tax (podatek od nieruchomości)

Status: in force (2026 rates).

Two houses on opposite sides of a municipal boundary can pay different property tax, legally, because each gmina sets its own rate. The mechanism is a good illustration of the whole framework:

• The Minister of Finance (Minister Finansów) announces the maximum rates each year, in an official notice (obwieszczenie).
• Each gmina then sets its own actual rate by resolution (an akt prawa miejscowego) at or below that ceiling.

So a town can never invent a tax of its own, but it can charge less than the national maximum, and the next town can charge a different amount. The legal basis is the Local Taxes and Charges Act of 12 January 1991 (ustawa o podatkach i opłatach lokalnych).

These are the maximums, roughly 4.5% higher than 2025, and your gmina’s own resolution sets the rate you actually pay, up to these figures. The same logic covers smaller local taxes a gmina may levy, such as the dog tax (podatek od posiadania psów).

A separate change took effect on 1 January 2025: the act now contains its own standalone definitions of a budynek (building) and a budowla (structure), instead of borrowing them from building law. The change followed a Constitutional Tribunal judgment of 4 July 2023 that struck down the old definition of budowla; the filing deadline for the 2025 declarations was pushed from 31 January to 31 March 2025.

You may also see talk of a podatek katastralny, a value-based “cadastral” tax. None exists in Poland as of June 2026. If one ever arrived, it would be a statute written in Warsaw, not a rate set by your gmina.

Waste collection rules (regulamin utrzymania czystości i porządku)

How your rubbish is sorted and how often it is collected is set by your gmina, which is why the bins and the rules look different when you move towns. The municipal council adopts a regulamin utrzymania czystości i porządku (regulations on keeping cleanliness and order) under Article 4 of the Act of 13 September 1996 on maintaining cleanliness and order in municipalities (ustawa o utrzymaniu czystości i porządku w gminach), after first obtaining the opinion of the county sanitary inspector (powiatowy inspektor sanitarny). The result: segregation rules and collection frequencies legitimately differ from one gmina to the next.

When local and national law clash: which wins?

The short version: the statute wins, every time. The Local Government Act of 8 March 1990 puts it bluntly: a municipal resolution or order that conflicts with the law is void (“uchwała lub zarządzenie organu gminy sprzeczne z prawem są nieważne”, Article 91). And Article 94 of the Constitution allows local law only “on the basis of, and within the limits of, authorisations contained in a statute.” A gmina cannot out-legislate the Sejm. If its resolution steps outside what a statute permits, the resolution is treated as never having been valid, not merely overridden.

One practical warning if you search this in Polish: the phrase uchwała sprzeczna z ustawą (“a resolution conflicting with a statute”) mostly returns company-law results, shareholder resolutions in a spółka z o.o. (limited company), which is a different area of law entirely. The local-government answer is the one above: Article 91 of the Local Government Act, enforced through the supervision process described in the next section.

Can a gmina ban something?

Only if a statute lets it. A gmina has no general power to prohibit whatever it likes; it can act only where a statute hands it that specific power. The night-time alcohol ban works because Article 12(4) of the Sobriety Act expressly authorises it. The same logic governs local rules on household sewage and septic tanks (szambo), on parking, or on animal-keeping. Each is lawful only to the extent a statute opens the door. Where there is no statutory authorisation, a ban is void, however popular it may be locally.

What to do if a local rule is unlawful

This is the part almost no guide tells you, and it is the most useful. If your gmina passes a rule that breaks a statute, there are two routes to get it struck down.

First, supervision (nadzór). Local law is policed for legality by the wojewoda (the regional governor, see below), with the Prime Minister (Prezes Rady Ministrów) above; financial matters go to the Regional Audit Chamber (Regionalna Izba Obrachunkowa, RIO). The supervisory body has 30 days from delivery of a resolution to issue a supervisory ruling (rozstrzygnięcie nadzorcze) annulling it. A minor, non-substantive breach earns only a finding, not annulment. After the 30 days are up, the supervisor can no longer annul the act itself and must instead take it to the administrative court. A supervisory ruling suspends the act automatically, by operation of law (Article 92 of the Local Government Act).

Second, and this is the route open to you as a resident, you can challenge the resolution yourself. Under Article 101 of the Local Government Act of 8 March 1990, a resident whose legal interest is harmed by a municipal resolution can take it to the regional administrative court (wojewódzki sąd administracyjny, WSA), with an onward appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny, NSA). You do not have to wait for the wojewoda to act: if a local rule harms you and you believe it is unlawful, you can put it in front of a court yourself.

Two regional terms that confuse everyone

Wojewoda vs sejmik: two kinds of “region”

At the regional level there are two separate authorities, and they are easy to mix up. The wojewoda (voivode) is the central government’s appointee in the region, a terenowy organ administracji rządowej (regional arm of the national government). The voivode represents Warsaw, can issue some local law, and runs the legality supervision described above. The self-government side is different: the elected sejmik województwa (regional assembly) and the marszałek (the marshal, who heads the regional self-government) run the województwo’s own affairs. Same region, two distinct bodies: one appointed by the central government, one elected locally. When someone says “the województwo decided,” it helps to know which of the two they mean.

Miasto na prawach powiatu: when one council does two jobs

In 66 cities (Warsaw, Kraków and the other large ones) there is no separate powiat. The city is a miasto na prawach powiatu (a city with county rights), so one council does both the gmina and the powiat jobs at once. This is exactly why a resident of a big city often cannot tell “which level” made a rule: legally, the same council made it wearing two different hats.

EU law versus the Polish Constitution: an open question

Status: contested and unsettled.

At the very top of the hierarchy sits the most disputed question of all: whether EU law can override the Polish Constitution. This one is genuinely unresolved, so treat any confident answer, in either direction, with suspicion.

Start with the formal text of the Constitution:

• Article 8 makes the Constitution “the supreme law of the Republic of Poland.”
• Article 91(2)–(3) gives a ratified international treaty, including the EU’s founding treaties, precedence over a statute it conflicts with, and provides that law made by an international organisation (the EU) applies directly and takes precedence over statutes.

Read carefully, the formal rule is about EU law versus statutes (ustawy), not versus the Constitution itself. That gap is where the fight is.

• The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) holds that EU law has primacy over all national law, including national constitutions.
• The Polish Constitutional Tribunal (Trybunał Konstytucyjny) pushed back in its judgment of 7 October 2021 (ref. K 3/21), holding parts of the EU Treaty unconstitutional insofar as they place EU law above the Constitution. The ruling was heavily disputed. The Legal Sciences Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences called it “illegal and harmful”, and the European Commission took Poland to court over it in July 2023.
• Most recently, the CJEU ruled against the Tribunal’s position in a judgment of 18 December 2025 (C-448/23), which also questioned the lawfulness of the Tribunal’s composition.

There is no settled answer. The formal precedence of EU law over ordinary Polish statutes is clear; the clash between EU law and the Polish Constitution is a live, politically charged dispute, not a closed legal question.