The article examines the implications of counting periods of professional activity towards an employee’s length of ser­vice under Article 3021 of the Labour Code, introduced by the Act of 26 September 2025, where the new rules would mean that the required length of service had already been completed before the Act entered into force. It considers whether periods of self-employment, work under civil-law contracts, or other qualifying forms of professional activity may give rise to the retroactive acquisition of service-re­lated benefits, or to their one-off acquisition on 1 January 2026. The author rejects both interpretations, arguing that Article 6 of the amending Act provides no basis either for the retroactive acquisition of an entitlement or for its au­tomatic acquisition upon the Act’s entry into force. Enti­tlement to a benefit requires both a rule linking a specified length of service to that benefit and a rule requiring the relevant period to be counted towards that length of ser­vice. Accordingly, the subsequent recognition of a period of professional activity for legal purposes does not, per se, give rise to claims relating to the period before the new provi­sions came into force.

The article concerns the legal classification, for the purpos­es of social security law, of contracts for the preparation of press materials in the publishing sector. Its aim is to ad­dress two questions: first, whether the preparation of press material may constitute the subject matter of a contract for specific work; and second, to what extent the Social In­surance Institution is entitled to verify such a classification. The authors argue that the preparation of a specific press item may be classified as the performance of a contract for specific work where the subject matter of the obligation has been sufficiently individualized, the result is capable of verification, and remuneration remains linked to the deliv­ery of the specified material. Neither the repetitive nature of the cooperation nor the use of a framework agreement excludes such a classification. A different assessment is justified only where the relationship between the parties amounts to the author’s continuing availability, the ongo­ing performance of non-specific editorial tasks, or a lasting integration into the organizational structure of the edito­rial office. Consequently, review by the Social Insurance Institution should not be abstract in nature or based solely on the fact of repeated cooperation, but should in each case require an assessment of the content of the specific obligation and the characteristics of the result.

The study deals with key problems related to the implementation of Directive 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law, which introduces uniform rules for the protection of whistleblowers for the entire European Union. The expiry of the deadline for its implementation provided for in the Directive has contributed to the assessment of the nature of the secondary legislation contained therein, which may also be relevant in subsequent disputes related to potential allegations of its incorrect transposition. The problem of the proposed scope of the subject matter of notification, which determines protection, contained in the draft law on the protection of persons who report violations of the law, was also analyzed as it does not take into account the international obligations of the Republic of Poland, emphasized in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The study also deals with the deficit of legal protection measures for whistleblowers in the planned Polish law.

The author analyses case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the binding effect of a certificate on legislation applicable (E101 and A1) for courts of a Member States in the event of fraud. Both in Polish literature and in case law, judgments in this area are assigned with different effects. What seems to prevail is a believe that the binding force of the abovementioned certificates has been weakened. This study aims at critical analysis of such a view, as well as at establishing conclusions resulting from the emerging jurisprudence. The first part of the study was published in the previous issue of the Labour and Social Security Journal

The author analyses case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the binding effect of a certificate on legislation applicable (E101 and A1) for courts of a Member State in the event of fraud. Both in Polish literature and in case law, judgments in this area are assigned with different effects. What seems to prevail is a believe that the binding force of the abovementioned certificates has been weakened. This study aims at critical analysis of such a view, as well as at establishing conclusions resulting from the emerging jurisprudence.

This paper concerns the issue of putting business activity under scrutiny by the Social Insurance Institution in terms of verifying assessment basis for calculating sickness insurance contributions and the amount of benefits therefrom. One could have get impression that the issue in question had been settled in the resolution of seven judges of the Supreme Court of 21 April 2010, II UZP 1/10. The recent case law of that Court, in particular judgments of 5 September 2018, I UK 208/17 and of 17 October 2018, II UK 301/17 and II UK 302/17, seems however to indicate that the problem has not lost its relevance. The purpose of this study is to critically analyze the latest case-law in the aforesaid area, especially in the context of normative changes that followed the resolution II UZP 1/10.

The outbreak of COVID-19 disease, in a way that has no precedent in recent times, forced adoption of a number of legal regulations to prevent further spread of the disease factor, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 virus. Such regulations did not bypass the Polish labor and social security law. Some of them aim — understandably — at providing financial assistance and relief in contributory obligations to employers and other contribution payers who, in connection with the COVID-19 epidemic, have suffered a significant threat to their operations. Others are aimed at reducing the scope of employee's protection, which is particularly evident in the case of employees of offices providing service to central government administration bodies. This article discusses these regulations and indicate basic problems associated with their application.