Journal of Business Law 07/2023

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 interior of the earth's crust is sometimes used for tourism, recreational, therapeutical and even sports, entertainment or other purposes. Example includes closed excavations of underground mining plants, caves and other similar objects, especially of a military nature. Their legal situation is extremely varied and full of doubts. Most of the requirements of the Geological and Mining Act apply, mutatis mutandis, to the use (for the purposes described above) of underground excavations workings of liquidated mining plants. The space within which the said objects are located is not covered by land ownership; it is the subject of a mining property right vested in the State Treasury. There are no grounds to apply these solutions to other underground facilities. In most cases, they are located within the spatial boundaries of land properties. An additional difficulty is the fact that it is extremely difficult to establish the criteria separating the space covered by the boundaries of land properties from those constituting the subject of mining property. Both of the above-mentioned categories of underground objects may qualify for monument protection, but they do not always fill into the division of monuments into "movable" and "immovable" (real property) objects. Therefore, it is doubtful whether they can be protected as monuments at all.

The purpose of this article was an attempt to identify and evaluate normative regulations defining the procedure for the return of EU funds under Polish law in the 2014–2020 financial perspective and to investigate whether this procedure enables the effective recovery of EU funding paid to beneficiaries in an unjustified manner. The research was based on the example of the Regional Operational Program for Podlaskie Voivodeship 2014–2020 and covered the years 2014–2021. The essential elements of the return procedure are regulated in Art. 207 of the Public Finance Act. As regards the decision to return the cofinancing from EU funds, the beneficiaries had the right to use the appeal procedure. Subsequently, they had the opportunity to lodge a complaint with the competent voivodeship administrative court, as well as a cassation appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court. The legal situation shaped in this way resulted in a low percentage of decisions discontinuing the proceedings, which was not favourable from the point of view of the beneficiaries. The rigorous nature of the procedure for the return of EU funds was to some extent offset by the judicial activity of administrative courts.

The article will compare billing systems for electricity generation from renewable energy sources – net-metering and net-billing. Due to the April 2022 amendment of the renewable energy legislation, which significantly affected the electricity market, the discussion of this issue is of particular significance. At present, the situation of prosumers, i.e., entities that produce electricity using micro-installations and account for surplus electricity, is diversified. The article will also present the importance and significance of renewable energy sources in the context of climate goals and the pursuit of a low-emission economy. The aim of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the new net-billing system with the system of discounts, i.e., net-metering, with particular consideration of the goals of the introduced changes, as well as to indicate conclusions in this regard de lege lata and de lege ferenda, which can be helpful in future legislative processes.

Legal problems, which were reflected in the two main theses of the justification of the commented judgment of the Supreme Court, concern issues related to the mandate and term of office of the management board of a joint-stock company. The first one is the assessment of the continuity of the joint term of office of the management board, in the event of premature expiry of the mandates of all its members. Referring to this issue, the Supreme Court assumed that the appointment of new members results in the commencement of a new term of office of the management board. The second issue concerns the assessment of the legal importance of appointing a new composition of the management board to replace the incumbent members of this body. According to the Supreme Court, the appointment of a new management board is followed by the dismissal of its existing members. The purpose of the gloss is to strengthen the argumentation and to present a proposal that is slightly different than the justification of the position expressed in the first thesis adopted by the Supreme Court, as well as a critical reference to the view expressed in the second thesis.