On April 3, 2025, the first reading of the draft amendment to the so-called Wind Energy Law, i.e. the Law of May 20, 2016 on Wind Energy Investment (i.e.: Journal of Laws of 2024, item 317) (the “Wind Energy Law”), prepared by the Ministry of Climate and Environment, took place in the Polish Sejm (lower chamber of the Parliament). The draft amendment was referred to the Energy, Climate and State Assets Committee and the Infrastructure Committee for further work.

The European Union continues its work on simplifying regulations related to reporting and sustainable development. In response to market feedback, the Omnibus Simplification Package introduces significant modifications in several key areas. The new provisions aim to reduce administrative burdens and simplify formal requirements, particularly for smaller entities.

The Ministry of Development and Technology has drafted an act on solutions to increase the availability of land for housing, which is currently at the inter-ministerial consultation stage.

The act aims to increase the supply of land for housing. According to the draft’s authors, this supply is currently too low, which is a barrier to real estate market development. Without taking action to effectively address this problem, we will observe a further decline in land availability and, as a result, a dynamic increase in land and housing prices.

The most significant solutions that the act introduces consist of:

1. amendment of the act of April 11, 2003 on the formation of the agricultural system in such a way that restrictions on the sale of agricultural real estate located within the boundaries of administrative cities will be abolished. Until now, the disposal of agricultural real estate designated in the local development plans for non-agricultural purposes and the disposal of real estate for the purpose of implementation of a housing project or an accompanying project within the meaning of the so-called lex developer law was free from restrictions.

In practice, however, there are still many areas in cities without enacted local development plans, and the number of investments implemented on the basis of lex developer is relatively small, so that still many agricultural properties in cities could not be freely traded, even if in fact they were not used for agricultural production and remained only wasteland.

Thanks to the amendment under discussion, the provisions of the act on the formation of the agricultural system will not apply at all to agricultural properties located within the administrative boundaries of cities. Thus, an important barrier to the urbanization process in cities will be removed;

2. amendment of the act of August 21, 1997 on Real Estate Management in such a way that the possibility of handing over land for perpetual usufruct for housing purposes will be restored (this possibility was excluded in 2018, and is now to return again).

It will be possible to stipulate in the agreement on the handover of land for perpetual usufruct that the right of perpetual usufruct will not be transformed into ownership within a certain period of time or indefinitely (without such a stipulation, the perpetual usufruct of undeveloped land handed over after the entry into force of the law will be transformed into ownership as of the date the residential building is put into use).

The adopted solution should be evaluated positively, because the restriction adopted in 2018 unreasonably inhibited, in our opinion, the implementation of housing projects on the land of the State Treasury and local government units, and now, once again, public entities will be able to give land in perpetual usufruct for the purpose of implementing such projects and retain control over the way the property is developed, which will be an instrument for conducting housing policy;

3. the introduction of a moratorium on the collection of planning fees. Pursuant to Article 36(4) of the act of March 27, 2003 on planning and spatial development, in the event that, in connection with the adoption of a local development plan or its amendment, the value of a property increases and the owner or perpetual usufructuary disposes of that property, the mayor or city president shall collect a one-time fee established in the plan, determined as a percentage of the increase in the value of the property. This fee is customarily referred to as the planning fee.

Such a regulation is clearly conducive to postponing the process of selling real estate – owners behave passively and wait until 5 years after the adoption of the local development plan to avoid charging the planning fee, which “freezes” the turnover of many lands for which a new local development plan has been adopted or changed to a more favorable one.

Instead, the draft’s authors envisage that the planning fee will not be charged in the case of the disposal of real estate that occurred within two years from the date of entry into force of the act. Such a solution will thus reward the quick sale of real estate after the entry into force of the act.

The draft of the act also introduces a major procedural change in the building permit procedure. Although it has no direct effect on increasing the supply of land for residential development, it is intended to help mitigate the practice of neighbours filing appeals against building permit decisions without deeper justification or argument – just to torpedo unwanted development.

A new Article 10b is to be added to the Construction Law, according to which an appeal against a decision or a complaint against a decision issued under the Construction Law is to contain specific allegations relating to the decision, the scope of the demand and evidence to support the demand.

In conclusion, we view the proposed changes positively – in part, by the way, they do not introduce new revolutionary solutions, but only remove inexpedient restrictions introduced in the last 9 years to unlock the frozen potential of many properties, which is intended – if not to reduce, then at least to halt – the growth of land and housing prices.

In addition, the stricter requirements for appeals in construction permit proceedings are also to be welcomed – in practice, there are unjustified appeals (often unsupported by any substantive arguments or evidence), and the planned changes may help reduce this practice.