Polish President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the Crypto-Asset Market Act on December 1, 2025, blocking Poland’s implementation of the EU MiCA regime and arguing that the bill endangered “the freedoms of Poles, their property, and the stability of the state.” The decision immediately created a regulatory gap that prevents Polish authorities from issuing MiCA authorisations and is already pushing firms to seek licences in other EU jurisdictions.
A veto that creates a regulatory vacuum across Poland’s crypto sector
The president’s decision means Poland now lacks the national implementing act required for MiCA-authorised services to operate domestically, even though MiCA will apply EU-wide from July 2026. As a result, no Polish authority is currently empowered to grant MiCA licences or impose MiCA-specific sanctions, producing a de facto vacuum in oversight and enforcement. Industry participants have responded by applying for MiCA authorisations in pragmatic jurisdictions such as Austria, Cyprus, Malta and Latvia, relying on passporting rights to continue EU-wide operations.
The presidential office objected to broad provisions granting the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) discretion to block crypto-company websites, describing the mechanism as opaque and vulnerable to abuse. Critics also pointed to the bill’s 100-plus-page length, arguing that its complexity encouraged overregulation compared with concise implementations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Additionally, high supervisory fees were flagged as burdensome, creating an uneven competitive field favoring large banks and foreign platforms over domestic startups.
For Polish firms, the logical strategic response is regulatory relocation rather than local compliance, a shift that risks tax-base erosion, talent flight and losses in domestic innovation capacity. Government ministers warned the veto could produce “chaos and a vacuum” enabling scammers, yet the absence of a national framework also limits Poland’s ability to police foreign-registered platforms serving local users.
The political context is equally important. The veto continues a pattern of presidential interventions by an opposition-aligned head of state, and overriding it requires a three-fifths majority in the Sejm, a threshold the current coalition may struggle to reach. Concerns were also raised about the KNF’s historical performance, with authorization timelines of 20–24 months and only two investment firm licences issued in a decade, reinforcing doubts about the regulator’s capacity to manage a broad new mandate.
Poland now enters a period of regulatory limbo, with firms exporting their licences abroad while domestic oversight weakens. The Sejm must now choose between attempting a three-fifths override or drafting a narrower bill aligned more directly with MiCA, and the next major milestone will be either a successful override or submission of a revised, streamlined framework.