Journal of Business Law 01/2026

This article presents the behaviour of online sellers (including marketplaces) – so-called e-shops – that violate consumer protection regulations. This primarily concerns prohibitions on unfair commercial practices, but also prohibited provisions of the statute of these entrepreneurs. The study focuses on the decisions of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) enforcing these regulations. This has occurred particularly over the past few years, reflecting the dynamic development of e-commerce and the increasingly frequent use of new forms of influencing online buyers (consumers). The article analyses the relevant legal regulations in this area to determine whether they are adequate to ensure effective consumer protection against unfair practices, particularly the use of deceptive interfaces (dark patterns).

The interpretation of the company interest has for years been the subject of lively debate in Polish company-law academia. In this article, which contributes to that debate, we propose shifting its focus from doctrinal attempts to define the company’s interest and from abstract, a priori hierarchies among the interests it is said to encompass to a more precise specification of the duties incumbent on corporate decision-makers when making business decisions in the course of managing the company’s affairs. We proceed from the premise that, in the context of managerial decision-making, what matters is not settling – “in the abstract” – how the company’s interest should be understood or whether the interests of its members (shareholders) should invariably take precedence over other, especially non-financial, objectives, but rather assessing whether the relevant body acted within the bounds of the managerial discretion afforded to it. The determination of what lies in the company’s interest should be left to the company’s office-holders (i.e., members of the management board and the supervisory board, and in a simple joint-stock company (PSA) also directors), who, when making such determinations, enjoy managerial discretion, provided they comply with the statutory duties of loyalty and care and with the requirements arising from the recently codified business-judgment rule.

The current legal status, as well as the historical perspective, allows us to assume that the EU legislator is not indifferent to the technological changes taking place. In order to ensure that the EU holds a leading position in the field of technology in various areas of citizens’ lives and the functioning of the economy, it must create an appropriate legal environment in this respect. Considering that the dynamics of change is felt in particular in the area of the financial market, whose potential for the development of innovative services and solutions is one of the highest, it should be emphasized that the regulation of this market is of great importance for ensuring that its participants can use new technologies in a way that stimulates market development, but also in accordance with EU values, in particular for the good of the individual and the public. It can therefore be argued that the innovativeness of the financial market becomes a normative assumption when creating acts of EU law and national financial market law, and also shapes a certain pattern thereof. This thesis will be subject to scientific reflection in the following study.

This article analyses the complexities of transferring an enterprise within bankruptcy proceedings, specifically in relation to value-added tax (VAT) regulations. The study aims to determine if and to what extent the particularities of bankruptcy law influence the classification of the object of sale as an enterprise or an organized part thereof, as defined by the VAT Act. It is posited that the disposal of an enterprise in bankruptcy proceedings – notwithstanding certain exclusions of assets as per bankruptcy law – is generally not subject to VAT. A functional interpretation of the term “enterprise” is decisive, both under national and EU law. Moreover, bankruptcy law mandates striving for the sale of the enterprise as a whole, which is also significant for the classification of such a transaction in the context of VAT.

AI systems have the potential to revolutionize the global information space and pose a challenge to the right to information. The use of artificial intelligence in journalism brings both benefits and challenges. Doubts arise in relation to the legal regulations applicable to materials created by artificial intelligence and disseminated in the press. The question arises as to how, in connection with the catalogue of duties and rights of the press, the activities of artificial intelligence should be qualified, whether they constitute press materials and whether artificial intelligence can legally replace journalists and fulfil the obligation to inform. The article shows that, upon the applicable regulations, replacing journalists with artificial intelligence as a decision maker regarding the press content, is not possible. Such activity also does not have the characteristics of press activity due to the lack of subjective premises of the press, i.e. the lack of natural persons creating press materials. Moreover, artificial intelligence, not having legal personality, cannot be held responsible for the content of the generated content. Their publication requires prior verification by journalists.

Real estate inspection is one of the activities of estimating the value of real estate and an important source of data about it. The purpose of this article is to highlight selected significant doubts related to the performance of property inspections by property appraisers in the process of estimating their value, and to attempt to interpret the provisions of the Regulation of the Minister of Development and Technology of 5 September, 2023, on real estate valuation (r.w.n.), regarding the obligation and method of conducting such inspections. To this end, using the formal-dogmatic method and, as an auxiliary, the comparative method, a comprehensive analysis of the issue of real estate inspections was conducted, starting from the provisions of the r.w.n. and reaching to examples of national regulations in other European Union member states. The article demonstrates that § 3 section 1 and 2 of the Regulation of the Minister of Development and Technology of 5 September 2023 on the valuation of real estate should be interpreted as meaning that it is the property appraiser who decides whether, to what extent and how he will perform the inspection. The appraiser may also waive the inspection in situations where it is possible to perform it, but he decides that he has sufficient knowledge about the property based on other sources. He does not have to conduct the inspection personally, he can appoint an appropriate person for this purpose. The inspection can also be performed remotely.

In the commentary to the decision of 4 December 2024, II CSKP 2047/22, the Supreme Court endorsed the view that there are no legal obstacles to making an entry in the land and mortgage register concerning a change of mortgagee even when the mortgage is a compulsory mortgage and was registered in favour of the assignor, a bank, based on a bank enforcement order. Arguments were presented to support this position. It was also noted that the view expressed in this ruling is not at all inconsistent with the fact that enforcement under a bank enforcement order with an enforcement clause may only be conducted for the bank’s benefit, not for another person.