Commercial law in Poland: Partnerships

Abstract

Commercial law has lost its status as a branch of law separate from civil law and currently forms only a specialised part of it. The key criterion for distinguishing commercial law is the entrepreneur in the sense that commercial law is “the private law of entrepreneurs”. Due to their key importance on the market, commercial law companies occupy a special place among entrepreneurs and therefore there are attempts to make these forms of business activity as attractive as possible. The same applies to partnerships. Therefore, the following legislative efforts should be noted. Owing to the introduction of the Commercial Companies Code in 2001, partnerships gained legal capacity, but were not equipped with legal personality, and continued to be considered “imperfect” legal persons. Consequently, although they may acquire rights and incur liabilities, unlike legal persons, they are tax “transparent”, which means that they are not subject to income tax. The adoption of the principle of subsidiary liability of partners for the obligations of a partnership has become an important step and it strengthens the position of partners. This means that the creditor of a partnership may only conduct enforcement from the partners’ assets when the enforcement against the partnership’s assets proves ineffective. As a result, as long as the claims of the partnership’s creditors can be satisfied from the partnership’s assets, the partners are not in danger of being held liable for the partnership’s obligations. The introduction of two new types of partnerships into the Polish legal system, namely the professional partnership and a limited joint-stock partnership is of great importance. The former is intended only for professionals and regulates the liability of a partner for the company’s obligations in a very favourable manner. The partner is liable in a limited manner, i. e., solely for malpractice committed by himself or by persons under his supervision. In turn, a limited joint-stock partnership was introduced to protect entrepreneurs (general partners in spe) who intend to recapitalise on the enterprise which usually has an established position on the market, by issuing shares, without exposing themselves to the danger of the so-called hostile takeover.