flash news: #foreigners
The Labour Market Department at the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy has published data on the employment of foreign citizens in Poland for 2024. These statistics confirm that the number of foreign citizens finding employment in Poland continues to grow.
On 21 February 2025, Parliament passed a law on the conditions for the admissibility of the assignment of work to foreigners, which introduces significant changes in the procedures for the employment of foreigners. The new regulations abolish the labour market test, which means that the counties themselves will decide in which professions and industries they will limit the possibility of entrusting work to foreigners.
During work on the act setting out the conditions allowing foreigners to work in Poland, the Extraordinary Committee adopted an amendment to the Labour Code.
The draft Act on the conditions of admissibility of entrusting work to foreign citizens in Poland originally envisaged allowing foreign citizens to be employed in Poland exclusively under employment contracts where the basis for employment was to be a work permit or a statement on entrusting work to a foreign citizen. The Government ultimately withdrew this proposal, largely under pressure from the public (including sectoral organisations and employers), which perceived a number of risks in this change, such as limiting the flexibility of the labour market and increasing the so-called grey market.
Last Friday (24 January), the Sejm appointed an Extraordinary Committee to consider the following draft laws concerning the labour market and foreign citizens staying in Poland:
More than six months after it was first drafted, today (on 7 January 2025) the bill has been placed before the Sejm (lower house of Polish parliament).
The bill includes, among other things:
- higher penalties for illegally engaging foreigners to work in Poland
- streamlining and fully digitalising procedures involving the legalisation of foreigners’ work in Poland.