Gabriel Hawryluk

Over the last eight years, the Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland redefined the boundaries of regulations governing the lifestyle of citizens, introducing a series of laws and regulations aimed at promoting desired or healthy habits and behaviors, while limiting access to products and services deemed harmful. From the closing shops on Sundays, through the introduction of a sugar tax, to the ban on the sale of energy drinks to minors—these and other decisions have sparked heated discus-sions about freedom, public health, and the effectiveness of the introduced measures. What were the actual effects of these regulations?

The Council of Ministers has decided to raise the minimum wage to 4242 zł gross from January 2024, and to 4300 zł from July. In relation to the average or median salary, the Polish minimum wage is already one of the highest in Europe. Despite this, it will increase again next year by more than one fifth.

Sejm (Polish lower house of parliament) has passed a law prohibiting the sale of energy drinks to individuals under the age of 18. New regulations also ban the sale of such beverages in educational institutions and vending machines. Restrictions are to come into effect on January 1, 2024.

The amendment to the Act on export insurance, as a government bill, should have included an assess-ment of regulation’s impact and undergone public consultations, which cannot be said of the amend-ments introduced by the Sejm, which should preferably be closely related to the original bill. In this case, we are dealing with far-reaching legal changes in an entirely different area than the one ad-dressed in the amendment. This form of legislation, not used for the first time by the ruling party’s politicians, is unacceptable in a developed democracy.