Business Law Journal 02/2023

The aim of the study was to indicate selected flaws in the legislative process for the creation of provisions of financial law, i.e. regulations relating to public financial activity, as well as an attempt to assess the impact of these shortcomings on the intended functions of the enacted norms. Due to the limited length of the article, the research covered only the legislative phase of in the Sejm. The analysis concerned bills passed during the 9th term of the Sejm, and the catalogue of forms of violations of the legislative process was limited to circumvention of provisions regulating the exercise of legislative initiative and failure to observe the requirement of considering bills in three readings. Since the term "functions of law" is far from unambiguous, this study refers to the category of the intended functions, i.e. expectations and requirements towards the law, which determine its potential effectiveness.

During the period under investigation, a number of violations were identified, consisting in circumventing the provisions regulating the exercise of the legislative initiative and the passing of bills in three readings. Amendments adopted in violation of the constitutionally specified legislative procedure concerned both levies law and the sphere of spending public funds. The achievement of the adopted research objectives made it possible to formulate the thesis that the above-mentioned flaws in the legislative process have a negative impact on the intended functions of financial law both in terms of stabilisation and changes in the system of social relations.

The purpose of the article is to present, in the context of information asymmetry, irregularities related to consumer credit in terms of non-fulfillment of information obligations noted in the decisions of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (OCCP) in the period of 2018–2021. While using the method of economic and legal analysis, the authors attempted to answer the question what irregularities, concerning the non-fulfillment of information obligations related to consumer credit, were identified in these decisions, and whether financial penalties were imposed on entities that did not fulfill these obligations. The analysis of irregularities presented in the paper shows that despite the legislation in force, the consumer is not sufficiently protected from information asymmetry.

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 article deals with the issue of non-monetary administrative sanctions, which, apart from administrative fines, are an important area in administrative law. The aim of the article is to present, on the basis of selected regulations of substantive law, the types and principles of applying non-monetary administrative sanctions. The article covers the types of non-monetary sanctions, which include: withdrawal of the rights, limitation of the scope of the rights, suspension of the rights and imposition of a non-pecuniary obligation. The issues concerning the principles of applying non-monetary sanctions, in particular the principle of proportionality, were also presented. Under the current legal status, the regulations on non-monetary sanctions do not create a uniform normative model. In particular, the lack of collective normalization of solutions allowing for the individualization of responsibility is noticeable, which does not have a positive effect on the legal situation of an individual, as the application of sanctions is always an interference with the sphere of the rights previously granted to him.

Stock split, which means a reduction of the nominal value of shares while maintaining the existing amount of share capital, is one of the practices used by issuers, mainly public ones. Although the split itself has effects primarily in the economic sphere, it is preceded by an appropriate procedure arising from legal regulations. The complexity of the procedure depends on the status of the issuer. In the corporate sphere, changes to the articles of association preceded by the relevant approvals of the company's bodies are sufficient for conducting a stock split. However, the more strictly regulated the industry in which an entity operates, the greater the number of sectoral regulations potentially affecting stock splits. As entities with a special status, banks and public companies should be mentioned, whose stock split should be preceded by an analysis of the Banking law, the Law on trading in financial instruments and the Law on public offering. The purpose of the article is to answer the question of what restrictions are associated with the issuer's status as a bank and a public company in carrying out a stock split, and to assess whether the current legal framework is sufficient.

The subject of this comment is the decision of the Supreme Court – Order of the Supreme Court – Civil Chamber dated 16 January 2020 (file ref.: I CSK 618/19), in which the Supreme Court expressed its unequivocal opinion on the interpretation of art. 48 of the 15 November 1984 Transport law, which refers to the activity of inspecting the consignment, indicating that the provision of art. 48 of the Transport law does not apply to situations where the carrier's interference is other than the opening of the consignment. In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the indicated provision applies only to such statements as the value or content of the consignment, or items allowed for transport in special conditions, as a result of which it does not apply to verification of the dimensions or weight of the consignment. The purpose of this publication is to analyze the Supreme Court's decision and demonstrate that in light of applicable law, the Supreme Court's position is correct and deserves approval.