The reform of Poland’s National Labour Inspectorate (Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy, PIP; Journal of Laws 2026, item 473) enters into force on 8 July 2026 and gives the labour inspector a new tool — an administrative decision establishing the existence of an employment relationship. But what happens when the other party to the contract is not a Polish business, but a company seated outside the European Union, with no branch in Poland or anywhere else in the EU? This question is asked by a growing number of people who work remotely with foreign companies — often paid through international employment platforms. The answer is less obvious than the headlines suggest.
The Inspector’s New Tool: An Administrative Decision
The reform does not change the definition of an employment relationship. Article 22 § 1 of the Labour Code retains its existing wording, as does the principle of substance over form under Article 22 § 1¹ of the Labour Code. What changes is the means of enforcing norms that already exist.
The most important novelty is Article 11(1)(7a) of the Act on the National Labour Inspectorate. It empowers the regional labour inspector (okręgowy inspektor pracy) to establish — by administrative decision — the existence of an employment relationship where a civil-law contract has been concluded, or where a person actually performs work under conditions in which, pursuant to Article 22 § 1 of the Labour Code, an employment contract should have been concluded.
The mechanism is not immediate, however. The Act constructs a two-stage procedure. First, the inspector issues an order to remedy the breach (Article 11(2) of the PIP Act) — after first allowing the parties to present their position. Only failure to comply with that order opens the path to a decision. The parties therefore have a statutory window to adjust the contract before an administrative ruling is issued.
Scope: Is a Non-EU Company Subject to Inspection at All?
This is the crux of the problem. The amended Article 13(1) of the PIP Act expands the scope of inspection — it covers not only employers, but also entrepreneurs that are not employers and other organisational units for which work is or was performed by natural persons, including persons running a sole proprietorship.
Crucially: the Act introduces no exemption for entities from outside the European Union. Article 3 of the Labour Code itself, which defines the employer, likewise contains no geographic element — it does not make employer status conditional on the place of registration or on any form of economic presence in Poland.
The case law of the Supreme Court has settled on what is known as the managerial model of the employer. According to the Supreme Court’s judgment of 19 May 2016 (II PK 100/15), in giving Article 3 of the Labour Code its current wording the legislator did not abandon the model in which the employer is an organisational unit whose management has the mandate to manage it and to direct the employees within it — irrespective of whether that unit has legal personality. This line is continued by the Supreme Court’s judgments of 30 January 2019 (I PK 231/17) and 2 September 2020 (I PK 39/19).
Closest to the situation that interests us is the Supreme Court’s judgment of 27 April 2022 (I PSKP 51/21), concerning the branch of a foreign entrepreneur. The Court confirmed that such a branch can be an employer if it is formally authorised in the statute or another internal act. Crucially for us — the Court indicated that in the absence of such authorisation, the employer is the foreign company itself. This indirectly confirms that a foreign entity can be an employer within the meaning of Article 3 of the Labour Code directly, without the intermediary of a branch.
It must, however, be honestly noted where the line lies: the available case law assumes the existence of a branch in Poland. The situation of a company from a third country that has no branch at all, either in Poland or in the EU, has not yet been the subject of a court ruling. The conclusion as to the authority’s substantive competence therefore rests on a literal and systemic interpretation of the provisions — and as such is directional in nature.
Competence Is Not the Same as Enforceability
Two things must be separated here: whether the inspector may conduct proceedings, and whether they can realistically carry them out and enforce the result.
PIP inspection activities are carried out exclusively on Polish territory. Against a non-EU company with no seat, branch, representative office or agent in Poland, the inspector has nowhere to conduct an inspection in the classic sense. The reform does introduce remote inspection (Article 26(5)–(8) of the PIP Act) and the option of demanding an online transmission, but their effective application against an entity that has no point of contact in Poland and does not cooperate is limited.
A second barrier is service of documents. Notification of the initiation of proceedings, the order, the decision — all of these require effective service on the addressee. In relations with states outside the EU, the Hague Convention of 15 November 1965 on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (Journal of Laws of 2000, No. 87, item 968) may apply, provided the state in question is a party to it. A distinction is worth noting: at the judicial stage (after an appeal against the decision is brought before the labour court), the Convention applies beyond doubt. At the strictly administrative stage, the classification of proceedings to establish an employment relationship as a “civil or commercial matter” within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention is not unequivocally settled. Regardless of the track — service abroad means a significant extension of the procedure and the need to translate documents.
The question of how the domestic legal system of the contractor’s home state would treat a Polish administrative decision is a separate and complex matter of foreign law, beyond the scope of Polish law.
What About an Intermediary Platform?
Many people working with foreign companies are paid through international employment platforms. The model in which such a platform operates matters here.
If the platform operates on a payment-intermediary model (the contractor invoices the foreign company directly and the platform merely handles the flow of payments), then it is neither the employer nor an agent of the foreign company for service of documents. Service of a PIP letter on the platform’s Polish subsidiary would not constitute effective service on the foreign contractor.
It is different under the Employer of Record model, in which a local entity steps in as the formal employer — in that case the cross-border element largely disappears and the legal situation looks entirely different. Determining which model a given platform actually operates under requires an analysis of the specific framework agreement.
A Foreign Choice-of-Law Clause Does Not End the Matter
A typical contract with a foreign contractor contains a clause choosing a foreign governing law and a clause designating the person providing the work as an independent contractor, in which the parties declare that no employment relationship exists between them.
Neither of these clauses excludes the competence of the Polish authority. Under Articles 8 and 9 of the Rome I Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 593/2008), a choice of foreign law may not deprive the employee of the protection afforded by provisions that cannot be derogated from by agreement under the law of the country in which the work is habitually carried out. The Polish Labour Code contains such overriding provisions — including Article 22 § 1¹. The assessment of the true character of the relationship is for the national authority, regardless of the name the parties have given the contract.
Likewise, a clause declaring independent-contractor status is merely a statement of the parties’ position, which the authority may take into account as an element of the factual circumstances, but which does not determine the legal classification.
What This Means in Practice
For those working with companies from outside the EU, the conclusions are as follows:
The PIP’s substantive competence to assess the relationship exists — even if the other party is a non-EU company with no branch in Poland. Contractual clauses (choice of foreign law, jurisdiction, contractor status) do not exclude that competence. At the same time, the practical conduct of an inspection and enforcement against such an entity runs into real procedural barriers — the territorial limits of the authority’s powers and the regime for service abroad. This is an area in which the practice of the authorities will only take shape once the reform enters into force.
The most sensible step is to review the actual substance of the cooperation — not just the name of the contract, but the way it is actually performed — against the features of an employment relationship under Article 22 § 1 of the Labour Code. The reform also provides for a 12-month period (until 7 July 2027) during which a voluntary transition to an employment contract exempts from petty-offence liability under Article 281 § 1(1) of the Labour Code (Article 16 of the amending Act).
The above text is for information purposes and does not constitute legal advice in an individual matter. Assessment of specific cooperation requires an analysis of the contract’s content and the actual conditions of its performance.