Poland's government adopts bills to raise day-fine rates and define shared custody in law

Poland's Council of Ministers adopted four Ministry of Justice bills on 3 November 2026. The daily rate used to calculate criminal fines would rise from a range of 10 to 2,000 zloty to 100 to 10,000 zloty, a tenfold rise at the minimum and fivefold at the maximum. The ministry says the limits have not changed for almost 30 years. A legal definition of shared custody after parents separate would be introduced: the genuine involvement of both parents in raising the child and in its day-to-day care, in recurring periods that need not be of equal length. The ministry's release does not say the bill makes shared custody the default. Court jurisdiction rules for consumer cases over the "free credit sanction", under which borrowers can repay a loan without interest and other costs in cases set by law, would change to spread cases across courts rather than concentrating them mainly in Warsaw. The maximum ticket fine for certain breaches of the law on measuring instruments, such as fuel pumps, would rise to 3,000 zloty.

Fines set in daily rates lose force if the rate limits do not keep pace with prices, and Poland's have stood still for almost three decades. The shared-custody definition touches a long-running family-law debate in many countries over whether shared parenting should be the default after separation. The bills have been adopted by the government only and are not yet law.