The Polish Civil Law Codification Commission Working on the Draft of the New Civil Code

Summary

POLISH CODIFICATION OF CIVIL LAW

Polish civil law was unified on 1 January 1947. Until then, several legal systems were in force on the territory of Poland: German law in the west, Austrian and partly also Hungarian law in the south, French and partly Russian law in the central part, and Russian law in the east. The task of preparing drafts to unify the whole of civil law was entrusted to the Codification Commission established in 1919. As a result of its work, it was possible to prepare and adopt a Code of Obligations and a Commercial Code, which came into force on 1 July 1934. The Code of Obligations was created following a legal analysis of the three existing civil codes which were in force at the time (Austrian, French and German). It also partly derived its solutions from the Swiss Code of Obligations. On the other hand, the Commercial Code, following the example of the German Commercial Code, governed not only the activities of companies governed by commercial law, but also commercial transactions (transactions between merchants). The provisions of the Commercial Code governing commercial transactions constituted specific law in relation to the provisions of the Code of Obligations. However, the legislators did not manage to enact the property, family and inheritance law before 1939. Still, the drafts prepared by the Codification Commission provided the basis for the decrees issued in 1945 and 1946 that provided for uniform regulation of property law, the land and mortgage registers, marital law, guardianship law and the law of succession.

As soon as these decrees were adopted, work began on the draft Civil Code, which continued, with a few years’ break, until 1962. At that time, several versions of the draft Civil Code were presented (the drafts from 1948, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1961 and 1962). Finally, the Polish Civil Code, which is even now still in force, was adopted on 23 April 1964. A little earlier, on 25 February 1964, the Family and Guardianship Code was enacted. The decision to separate family law from the draft Civil Code was made towards the end of the legislative process and was motivated primarily by political and ideological considerations.