global mobility | In Principle

Foreigners considering relocating to Poland for the short or long term, or even resettling to live and work here permanently – also with children – face questions and raise concerns about the model of education and the standard of medical care in the country.

With increasing mobility on the labour market, more and more foreigners from non-EU countries are settling in Poland for economic reasons. As most often salaries are paid by bank transfer, one of the first issues when relocating is to open a bank account in Poland. To keep up with market changes, Polish banks try to make their offers more flexible and adapt them to customers’ current needs. Thus banks offer many services aimed at foreigners, including those from non-EU countries, and banking products are becoming more and more available to them.

Increasing interest of foreign nationals in moving to live and work in the European Union is the main driver in recent times for seeking to obtain citizenship of an EU country. This also applies to Poland, as Polish citizenship gives the right to live and work not only in Poland but also across the entire EU.

The game development industry knows no boundaries, and often attracts workers from all over the world. But employment and immigration regulations pose a barrier to drawing on the resources of the global labour market, particularly when a game development studio considers employing persons in Poland who are citizens of countries outside the EU, the EEA, or Switzerland. However, new non-standard forms of work help overcome the difficulties in hiring foreigners, and are worth considering for roles such as programmers, graphic designers, sound engineers, script writers, and game testers.

The Act on Posting of Employees for Performance of Services of 10 June 2016, implementing the Posting of Workers Directive (96/71/EC) and the Enforcement Directive (2014/67/EU), imposes a number of obligations on foreign employers posting their employees to Poland which may prove difficult to implement in practice.

Temporary stay up to 3 years, application for a stay permit up to the day before the visa expires, and a single permit for stay and work: These are just a few of the advantages introduced by the new Foreigners Act.

Current law does not provide any special regulations for an employer in Poland delegating an employee to perform work abroad, but delegation abroad may be carried out on the basis of the general regulations of employment law.

Wybór prawa obcego do umów o pracę wykonywanych w Polsce nie wyłącza stosowania do nich większości przepisów prawa polskiego.

The province governor cannot issue a decision to deport a foreigner who was illegally hired if the hiring is legalised during the course of the deportation proceeding by obtaining the required permits and complying with the applicable procedures.

Solutions gradually being introduced to enable hiring in Poland of citizens of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus, as well as Georgia and Moldova, are helpful mainly for short-term employment.

Magdalena Świtajska from the Employment Law practice group at Wardyński & Partners explains the sanctions faced by employers for illegally hiring foreigners and by foreigners working illegally in Poland.