The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the legal nature of support for the social economy, including the identification of support entities and beneficiaries of support and aid measures. Such support is of a functional (subject matter) nature and is related to the general delineation of a number of activities aimed at all social economy entities, including social enterprises. Support for the social economy stems from certain premises of a legal nature, which include, in the first place, the constitutional principle of a social market economy and the public interest and social justice clauses arising from or connected with this principle. Support for the social economy is the task of public administration and voivodeship self-government. It is implemented with the use of financial but also organisational instruments and support programmes. The provisions defining the support for the social economy are highly imperfect, inconsistent and chaotic; they need to be systematised. The research carried out is a formal-dogmatic analysis.

The subject matter of the new law on the social economy is, in particular, the creation, organisation, principles of operation of a social enterprise and supervision of such an enterprise. A social enterprise is created by the competent voivod at the request of a specific social economy entity. The enterprise does not have a defined organisational and legal form; its status has not been fully defined although it has been established in order to carry out economic activity, as well as public utility and other gainful activity. The law on social economy is an expression of the implementation of a concept and, at the same time a socio-economic programme, into the legal system, which entails the need to juridise a whole series of conceptual categories and link them to analogous or similar categories from the area of positive law.

The extraordinary conditions in which entrepreneurs must function after the state of the epidemic was declared in Poland mean a deep crisis covering the entire economy. The situation forces the legislator to shape the law of "epidemic status" and the law of "economic crisis" accordingly. In Poland, such a law was made, it was given specific content, under which various support measures for entrepreneurs were indicated, as well as the competences of the bodies and institutions designated to take actions for the sake of entrepreneurs. It is necessary to determine whether the legislator's activities were adequate to the current situation, and in particular whether appropriate legal foundations for the functioning of entrepreneurs in the epidemic conditions were created. It seems obvious that the support for entrepreneurs should be considered as a state obligation, i.e. in fact as the obligations of many entities acting on behalf of the state. It becomes important to establish a list of these entities and to determine their role in the process of supporting entrepreneurs from the point of view of the assumed effects of their activities. What is also of much significance are the premises for the state's impact on the economy in the conditions of epidemic and crisis.