On 4 September 2026 the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, took up the president's request to reconsider the Act of 15 May 2026 on the crypto-asset market. The record of vote no. 15 at the 64th sitting shows 241 votes to override the veto, 198 against and 3 abstentions, out of 442 members voting. The three-fifths majority stood at 266. The override fell 25 votes short.
What MiCA leaves to national law
Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, known as MiCA, has applied directly across the member states since 30 December 2024. Article 93(1) requires each member state to designate, under its own law, the competent authority that carries out the functions the regulation sets out. MiCA lays down authorisation conditions and firm obligations, but it does not name that authority, it does not create the national penalty regime, and it does not organise the review procedure. National implementing legislation has to supply all three. Poland has not passed it.
With no designated authority, no application from a crypto-asset service provider established in Poland can be reviewed. No review means no authorisation, and no authorisation means no passport under Article 65, which opens the other member states to an authorised provider from its home country.
The payments angle: a supervisor for e-money tokens
An e-money token is a crypto-asset that holds a stable value by referencing a single official currency. MiCA treats it as electronic money, and therefore as a payment instrument, and limits issuance to credit institutions and electronic money institutions. The KNF remains the competent authority for those issuers under Article 3(1)(35)(b). This segment is the only part of the Polish crypto-asset market that still has a supervisor.
The 1 July 2026 deadline has passed
Article 143(3) of MiCA allowed providers that operated lawfully under national rules before 30 December 2024 to keep going on that basis until 1 July 2026, or until an authorisation was granted or refused, whichever came first. In Poland those firms are mostly the entities entered in the virtual currency activity register kept by the tax administration chamber in Katowice.
The UKNF had set out what would happen next. At that deadline, absent a designation, domestic firms would lose the ability to provide crypto-asset services on that basis until they obtained an authorisation. Opening an authorisation procedure in Poland requires the authority to be designated by statute. That deadline cannot be extended by an act of parliament or by a KNF decision.
What the blocked act contained
| PROVISION | Content |
|---|---|
| Competent authority | The KNF becomes the supervisor of the crypto-asset market under MiCA. |
| Precautionary measures | Freezing of fiat currency or crypto-asset accounts, and suspension of specified transactions for 96 hours, extendable to six months. |
| Register | A register of fraudulent internet domains used for crypto-asset activity. |
| Supervisory fees | Capped at 0.5% for token issuers and 0.4% for service providers. |
President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the act on 11 June 2026, and his request for reconsideration was filed with the Sejm as print no. 2710 on 17 June. He says he backs regulating the sector, while objecting to the compliance cost of the scheme and to the breadth of the powers handed to the administration, including the power to restrict access to websites. Finance and Economy Minister Andrzej Domański says he favours filing a fourth, identical government bill; no decision has been taken.
The Zondacrypto case in the debate
The vote came while prosecutors were pursuing their investigation into Zondacrypto, an exchange founded as BitBay. Supporters of the bill cited the case to make their argument.
The designation now depends on a text the Sejm can no longer adopt. A fourth draft would start again at first reading, and would still need three-fifths if it drew another veto. Providers authorised in another member state can keep serving the Polish market. Providers established in Poland have no route to authorisation until the designating act is passed.