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Gondek, Michal --- "Poland" [2006] ELECD 200; in Smits, M. Jan (ed), "Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law

Editor(s): Smits, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420130

Section: Chapter 49

Section Title: Poland

Author(s): Gondek, Michal

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

49 Poland
Michal Gondek
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1 Introduction
Poland (Polska) has undoubtedly a civil law system. Major parts of its civil,
penal and procedural law have been codified in respective codes. With the
exception of the communist period, the Polish legal system has remained
under the strong influence of both French and German legal traditions,
although it would now be qualified as belonging to a family of former
communist countries. At present, although the spirit of the Code Napoléon
has not vanished completely from Polish civil law, still being noticeable
for example in property law or the law of civil responsibility, the system
has moved closer to the German legal family: the Civil Code of 1964 has
a general part and is drafted in a rather abstract manner. In the new
Commercial Companies Code of 2000 German influence is also visible.
The sole official language in Poland is Polish. It is the language in which
all laws and case law are printed and which is used in all court proceedings.
The draft law on national minorities allows `supplementary use' of minor-
ity languages in administrative proceedings in localities inhabited mainly
by national and ethnic minorities. Considering that such minorities form
only around 3 per cent of the country's population, this has a very limited
significance in practice.
In the discourse on comparative law, Poland appears usually as a legal
system which takes over solutions from other legal systems and lends itself
to legal transplants, especially in the context of major ...