Poland’s government is proposing a new law that would make parent companies liable for their subsidiaries’ violations of the competition protection law if the parent company “exercised decisive influence” on the subsidiary.
Currently, Polish law could be described as being extremely strict in not recognizing “piercing the corporate veil” between parent companies and their subsidiaries. The proposed law would represent a breakthrough and a milestone in Polish corporate law by providing much clearer grounds for finding a parent company liable for the actions of its subsidiary. In addition, it would significantly increase the power and authority of the Head of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), which, under its current head, has become much more active in levying substantial fines for violations of Poland’s Competition and Consumer Protection Law.
The justification for the proposal is the need to incorporate the so-called ECN+ Directive into Polish law. In doing so, the proposal addresses the general requirements of the directive, which is intended to provide more efficient and effective enforcement of competition protection laws within the EU member states, and to further empower the competent authorities in that regard.
It is expected that the Unified Patent Court (UPC), the proposed common patent court in the EU, will be operational as of spring 2022. The UPC will provide an efficient forum for the enforcement of patents in Europe, ending the need for parallel litigation in different member states of the EU. It will also harmonize substantive patent law with regard to the scope and limitations of the rights conferred by the patent and the remedies for infringement. However, not all patents should be included in the UPC jurisdiction.
The amendment of the Commercial Companies Code (hereinafter “CCC”) to introduce holding law has already been discussed in our material 
Much attention has been paid recently to the latest government-sponsored, draft civil procedure amendment, which, piggybacking on the e-bidding solutions regulations, proposes amendments to the COVID-19 acts introducing temporary solutions regarding, among others, the functioning of civil courts.
The need to regulate the so-called “holding law” within the commercial law has raised much controversy for some time now. Unlike certain foreign legal frameworks, the Polish law had been functioning with merely fragmentary regulations in that regard – legal scholars had been debating the purpose of introducing such solutions to the Polish Commercial Companies Code.
On 5 November 2020, the first reading of the bill of the new Construction Act took place in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament. It was assigned to committees with a hundred-day deadline to provide views on the new bill. The original draft was prepared in cooperation with the Czech Chamber of Commerce and in the autumn of 2019 was sent out for a general consultation. The new revised proposal from the Ministry was presented in May 2020 and is a fundamentally different document that was only slightly modified after discussion with the Legislative Council of the Government before it was submitted to the Parliament. The basic aim is to speed up and streamline permitting processes as the Czech Republic currently stands on the 157th place out of 190 countries evaluated. The new Construction Act is scheduled to take effect on 1 July 2023, with the exception of some provisions that are to take effect earlier. 