According to the announcements, the National Register of Debtors will commence operations on July 1, 2021. The information contained therein will be public, and the register will be run in an ICT system by the Ministry of Justice. As a rule, data from the register, excluding cases specified in the Act, will not be erasable.
The information contained in the National Register of Debtors is supposed to enable potentially every interested party to verify their business partners from the perspective of their possible insolvency. The efficient functioning of the National Register of Debtors is supposed to significantly increase the security of economic transactions, thus rendering it more difficult for dishonest entrepreneurs to incur liabilities.
What can be found in the National Register of Debtors?
According to the Act on the National Register of Debtors, it will disclose information about:
- natural persons, legal persons, and organizational entities other than legal persons vested with legal capacity by the law, against whom restructuring proceedings, bankruptcy or secondary bankruptcy proceedings are being or were conducted in the past, as well as proceedings concluded with a final ruling banning business activity pursuant to art. 373(1) of the Bankruptcy Law and in relation to the recognition of a decision on the opening of foreign bankruptcy proceedings;
- partners in a commercial partnership who are liable for the company’s obligations without limitation with all their assets, in case the company has been declared bankrupt, secondary bankruptcy proceedings have been opened against the company or a motion to declare the company bankrupt has been dismissed pursuant to art. 13(1) or (2) of the Bankruptcy Law;
- natural persons, legal persons, and organizational entities other than legal persons vested with legal capacity by the law, against whom enforcement proceedings were conducted but were discontinued due to ineffectiveness;
- natural persons subject to enforcement of alimony benefits and enforcement of state budget receivables arising from benefits paid in case of ineffective enforcement of alimony, and who are in arrears with payments for more than 3 months.
In order to search for data disclosed in the register, the key tools will be either the Universal Electronic System for Population Records Number (PESEL; Personal Identification Number), the Tax Identification Number (NIP), or the Case File Reference Number. If there is no PESEL number, other data allowing identification will be used, in particular the passport number and the indication of the country issuing the passport, the number of the Republic of Poland residence card or the number in a foreign register or foreign tax identification number.
The launch of the National Register of Debtors was a long awaited solution in view of the fast-changing legal and economic reality. The need to introduce a uniform database using an ICT system proved to be a necessity in the era of dynamic development of technology. Noteworthy is the fact that the assumptions of the register are to streamline the work of the administration and to facilitate court proceedings.