The OECD Working Group on Bribery decided at its December 2024 meeting to request Poland to urgently develop an action plan to address deficiencies in implementing the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. According to the new follow-up assessment report, Poland has made insufficient progress over the past 2 years on key areas and the vast majority of the Working Group’s recommendations from 2022 remain unimplemented.

The Working Group is gravely concerned about the lack of meaningful steps to implement the recommendations concerning prosecutorial and judicial independence under Article 5 of the Convention. The law to ensure that the majority of the National Council of Judiciary is elected without the influence of the executive and legislative branches passed in July 2024, but it is still not in force due to a pending revision at the Constitutional Court, initiated by the President of the Republic. The Minister of Justice remains the Prosecutor General and thus still dominates the Prosecutor’s Office and can influence the functioning of the courts. No steps have been taken to exclude executive influence in the appointment, discipline and removal of prosecutors. The Minister of Justice continues to be able to disclose information on ongoing investigations for vaguely defined reasons and to any recipients. 

Equally concerning are further unaddressed shortcomings that severely undermine Poland’s compliance with the Convention. The application of corporate liability remains virtually impossible as it requires a natural person’s conviction. Poland has no national strategy to fight foreign bribery. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs appears disinterested in detecting or raising awareness of foreign bribery. Remedies for whistleblowers who suffer retaliation under the new whistleblowing law are inadequate. 

On the positive side, all recommendations regarding money laundering predicated on foreign bribery have been addressed by the Polish financial intelligence unit. Meaningful steps in the implementation of the recommendations were taken by the Deputy Prosecutor General through the issuing of guidelines to prosecutors concerning the investigation and prosecution of foreign bribery.

In conclusion, the Working Group decided to invite Poland to develop an action plan for the implementation of the priority recommendations. Requesting an action plan is one of a series of possible measures available for the Working Group in case of continued failure to adequately implement the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention under the Working Group’s monitoring procedures for its 4th Round of mutual evaluations. The Working Group on Bribery will assess Poland’s action plan at its upcoming plenary meeting in March 2025.

For further information, journalists are invited to contact the OECD Media Office (+33 1 45 24 97 00).

For more information on the implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in Poland please visit this web page. 

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