Polish lawmakers have reintroduced a digital asset bill aimed at bringing the country in line with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, despite an almost identical bill suffering a presidential veto, followed by a failed attempt to overturn the veto, earlier this month.
On December 8, Polska2050, part of the ruling coalition in the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, kicked off a second attempt at getting MiCA-compliant digital asset legislation onto the statute, less than a week after parliament failed to overturn President Karol Nawrocki’s veto of the last attempt.
The reintroduced bill, known as Bill 2050, was described by Polska2050 member Adam Gomoła as an “improved” successor to the vetoed digital asset bill, known as Bill 1424, which was introduced in June by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government. However, government spokesman Adam Szłapka reportedly said that “not even a comma” had been changed from the previous version.
This latter view appears to be largely accurate, as Bill 2050 is an 84-page document that, for all intents and purposes, appears the same as Bill 1424. Specifically, both versions are intended to align Poland with the EU’s MiCA framework for digital asset markets by designating the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, the main financial regulatory authority in the country, as the primary domestic digital asset market regulator—a measure Tusk’s Civic Coalition government argued was necessary to protect consumers and ensure that Poland benefits from the market.
President Nawrocki, who is aligned with the right-wing populist opposition party, vetoed Bill 1424 on December 1, on the basis that it posed “a real threat to the freedoms of Poles and the stability of the state.” During his 2025 Presidential campaign, Nawrocki had promised that he would not allow freedom-restricting regulations concerning investment in modern assets.
Meanwhile, other critics of the previous bill argued that it imposed too stringent licensing rules, high compliance costs and criminal-liability provisions for service-provider executives, as well as posing the risk of stifling innovation and creating an “uncompetitive business environment.”
Nevertheless, advocates for the bill attempted to overturn the president’s veto in parliament on December 5, but fell 18 votes short of the three-fifths majority required.
Perhaps then, it is not a huge surprise that when the new bill was submitted on December 8, only three days later—not allowing much time for revisions and updates—it turned out to be basically unchanged and lacking any notable compromises to the naysayers.
Yet Prime Minister Tusk is reportedly hopeful that the president will allow this new, seemingly unchanged version to pass, and his optimism may not be unfounded. According to government spokesman Szłapka, after the failure of Bill 1424, President Nawrocki received a classified security briefing last week in parliament, which meant he “now has full knowledge” of the implications for national security should the bill not be passed, as reported by the local outlet TVN24 on December 9.
However, the attempt by the ruling coalition to essentially re-enter the same bill under a different name has not gone down well in all quarters.
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Opposition to the bill
Polish politician Tomasz Mentzen, who previously criticized Bill 1424 as “118 pages of overregulation,” wrote on X on Tuesday that, with Bill 2050, “the government has once again adopted exactly the same bill on cryptoassets.”
He added that “this is precisely what listening to the voice of experts and critics looks like and has looked like on the part of the government.”
Mentzen also bemoaned that proponents of the legislation think “the bill is perfect, and anyone who thinks otherwise is funded by Putin,” an allusion to comments made by Tusk before the attempt to overturn the presidential veto of the previous version.
Tusk told parliament that the bill would give Polish authorities “tools to control a new market, which is not regulated, where the Russian services, Russian mafia and money laundering are present.”
This kind of rhetoric is not without reason. Since its illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has been the subject of massive and unprecedented sanctions. Facing mounting isolation and economic precarity, the pariah state has increasingly turned to the digital asset space for a sanction evasion solution.
The EU, as an economic and political bloc, took one of the hardest lines with Russia when it comes to sanctions, and the MiCA regulation comes with a range of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CTF) obligations to combat Russia, or any other criminal entity, seeking to use the digital asset space for illicit purposes.
MiCA was passed by all 27 EU member states, including Poland, and, unfortunately for the vocal opponents of Bill 1424, or the ‘updated’ reissue Bill 2050, non-compliance with its mandates is not an option for those who wish to benefit from the bloc’s single market.
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EU’s ticking clock
Based on the MiCA regulation, which fully came into force last December, crypto-asset service providers must obtain MiCA authorization to benefit from the EU-wide “passporting regime,” whereby a MiCA license issued in one EU country allows a firm to operate freely across the entire bloc.
Existing providers can continue under national transitional regimes until July 1, 2026, after which only fully MiCA-licensed entities can operate and passport their services across the EU.
For this reason, many digital asset companies have already been actively obtaining licenses in various EU jurisdiction.
EU member states do not need to separately pass MiCA-aligned legislation for the regulation itself to apply; however, they must enforce MiCA’s authorization and supervision framework. To do so, they need to establish or designate a “national competent authority’ that can authorize and oversee the domestic digital asset sector. This typically requires national legislation setting out licensing procedures, enforcement powers, sanction regimes, and the identity of the regulator.
Poland is the sole remaining EU country that has not passed the necessary legislation to align itself with MiCA, and if it doesn’t do so by July 2026, it will not be able to license any domestic digital asset firm under MiCA.
While some advocates of the reintroduced digital asset bill are optimistic that this ticking clock may help inspire President Nawrocki to a change of heart, there is reportedly also speculation that he has been presented with an “alternative” draft, still aligned with MiCA but aimed at creating more “favorable” market conditions. However, details are unclear on the rumor.
Either way, all eyes will be on the president’s reaction to Bill 2050 and if the deadlock can finally be broken.
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Watch: Breaking down solutions to blockchain regulation hurdles
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Source: https://coingeek.com/poland-revives-failed-crypto-bill-to-meet-eu-mica-push/