17 October 2023
Immigration
Impact High
Summary
On Sunday 15 October, the Polish electorate went to the polls to cast votes in the parliamentary election. Final vote counts announced on Tuesday 17 October determined that Poland’s opposition parties won enough seats to take power from the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość “PiS”) which has been in power since 2015.
What might this mean for immigration policy going forward? Our immigration team in Poland shares initial thoughts on the potential impact below.
Details
Although there is no coherent migration program proposed, it is an important topic for the winning parties. The general statements indicate that the migration policy will depend on Poland’s economic needs, but no mechanism has been revealed yet. It has been underlined that Ukrainian citizens helped entrepreneurs fill the gap in the labour market. The attention will most likely be directed to processes related to granting the visas, ensuring safety and implementing proper control measures over the border of a Polish territory would most likely be the priorities of the new government.
Taking into account the announcements of the liberal and EU oriented parties that actually won the Polish elections and will probably rule in Poland for the coming years, we can expect Poland to open up and facilitate the employment of highly qualified foreigners in Poland.
But, due to the concerns raised during the election campaign regarding issues with Poland’s granting visas to third-country nationals, the Polish authorities will now be strongly focused on introducing objective algorithms allowing for the verification of foreigners wishing to enter Poland and implementing security measures.
In practice, it may enforce greater care in preparing complete applications and additional documents supporting a justified stay in Poland. This will require a lot of attention to detail. A more comprehensive approach to tax and immigration compliance is also expected (we hear about an introduction of an online platform for the exchange and monitoring of information regarding immigration, tax, labour law and social security statuses of foreigners).
What this means
To summarise, we expect that the immigration policy will respond to the needs of the Polish entrepreneurs towards the labour market (with a strong demand on highly qualified workforce), but due to security issues, more attention will potentially be paid to proper and very detailed compliance enforcing employment of foreign nationals being managed by the immigration specialists.
Our immigration team in Poland and advisory team continue to monitor the impact of the elections on immigration policy closely. Should you wish to discuss the above in further detail please do reach out to your usual Vialto Poland contact.
Contact us
Should you require more information, please reach out to your Vialto Partners point of contact, or alternatively:
Emilia Piechota
Director – Immigration, Vialto Partners Poland
emilia.piechota@vialto.com
Jadwiga Chorązka
Partner – Workforce Tax, Vialto Partners Poland
jadwiga.chorazka@vialto.com
Hugo Vijge
Director – Europe Immigration Advisory Lead
hugo.vijge@vialto.com
Raj Mann
Director – Global Immigration Advisory Lead
raj.x.mann@vialto.com
Further information on Vialto Partners can be found here: www.vialtopartners.com