Effective 21 August 2019, major changes to the Legal Costs in Civil Cases Act of 28 July 2005 are coming into force following the publication of the Act of 4 July 2019 amending the Polish Code of Civil Procedure (“CCP”) and certain other acts (Journal of Laws [Dz. U.] 2019, item 1469) in the Journal of Laws on 6 August 2019. With this post, we are kicking off a new series to give you an overview of the changes made.

First of all, the current maximum court fee rate of PLN 100,000 will rise to PLN 200,000. The court fee charged on a summons to a conciliation hearing will become dependent on the value of the claim (instead of the existing fixed fee rates of PLN 40 or PLN 300).

Under the new legislation, for cases with claims up to PLN 20,000, the amendment introduces fixed fee rates ranging from PLN 30 to PLN 1,000, according to the value threshold.

For property rights cases with claims or appeals worth over PLN 20,000, a relative fee will be payable at 5% of the above value but no more than PLN 200,000. Hence, if the value of the claim or the value of the appeal in a case exceeds PLN 2,000,000 (up to PLN 4,000,000), the court fee due will be 5% of the claim’s worth, i.e. a pro rata amount between PLN 100,000 and PLN 200,000. For cases with claims of PLN 4,000,000 or more, the court fee will be PLN 200,000.

A fifth of the fee that would otherwise be charged on filing a lawsuit will be payable on an application for summons to a conciliation hearing.

The above changes are coming into effect as of 21 August 2019. Thus, filing request for a summons to a conciliation hearing or a lawsuit before 21 August 2019 would mean being able to benefit from the lower rates applicable under the existing legislation.