flash news: #foreigners
On 7 August 2025, the Government Legislation Centre published the Minister of Family Labour and Social Policy draft regulation of 4 August 2025 on countries whose citizens may be covered by declarations on entrusting work to foreigners and certain provisions of the Act of 20 March 2025 on the conditions for permissibility of entrusting work to foreigners.
In connection with the war in Ukraine and the massive influx of its population to Poland, the so-called Ukrainian special law introduced a provision temporarily limiting deadlines in cases concerning legalisation of residence in Poland. According to the current wording of art. 100d of the Ukraine special law, in the period until 30 September 2025, the course of deadlines for handling cases concerning temporary residence permits, permanent residence permits, and long-term EU residents does not start, and the one started is suspended for this period.
From July 7, 2025, the Polish government has reinstated temporary border controls at the internal borders of the Schengen area with Germany and Lithuania. According to the authorities, the aim of this decision is to strengthen state security and prevent the uncontrolled flow of migrants.
The start of June saw the entry into force of the Act on the Conditions Permitting Foreigners to Work in the Republic of Poland, dated 20 March 2025. The Act requires employers to provide the Ministry with copies of contracts that have been concluded with any foreigners, before such persons may be allowed to work based on a declaration assigning work to them or a seasonal work permit.
According to the latest (published on 9 June 2025) information from Statistics Poland (GUS), more than one million foreigners (1,064,100) were working in Poland at the end of December 2024. Their share in the total number of people working in Poland was thus 6.8%. This means an increase in the number of foreigners working in Poland over the past year by 6.4% (comparing statistics from January and December 2024).
Pursuant to recently introduced amendments to the Act on Foreigners (which came into force on 1 June), changes concerning the EU Blue Card now allow foreign nationals without higher education qualifications to prove their possession of higher professional qualifications in certain IT professions by presenting at least three years of professional experience (as opposed to the standard five years), provided that this experience was gained within no more than seven years prior to submitting the application.