An article by one of our Law Firm Partners, Professor Wojciech Kocot, titled “Dalsza modernizacja formy pisemnej czynności prawnej” [Further Modernization of Written Form of Legal Transaction] will be published in the September issue of Przegląd Prawa Handlowego [Commercial Law Review] (2016/9).
With the Act of 10 July 2015 amending the Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure and some other Acts (Dz.U. (Journal of Laws) of 2015, item 1311), our legislator introduced further, in many cases controversial, amendments to Book One of the Civil Code. The amendments that will come into effect on 8 September 2016 are of great significance for contracting practices, in particular for entrepreneurs who execute contracts. The amendment concerns mainly regulations contained in Title IV Section III “Form of legal transactions”, which were significantly modernized thirteen years ago. As a consequence of new social and economic phenomena triggered by digitalization, globalization and unification of laws, the traditional written form of a legal transaction is no longer associated with a “letter”. It is replaced by simplified forms. An idea of introducing a text form, following the example of the German Civil Code, is being implemented. The form of consequent legal transactions is evolving. The proposal to abolish the reservation of the ad probationem requirement solely for the ordinary written form has become real. Amongst others, the catalogue of special forms of legal transactions in the Civil Code has been extended to include a new documentary form (Article 772 of the Civil Code), the regulations on ordinary written form have been amended to separate an electronic form (repealed Article 78 paragraph 2 of the Civil Code, a new Article 781 of the Civil Code), the Civil code has been supplemented with a legal definition of a document (Article 773 of the Civil Code), the list of cases in which a letter receives a status of a writ with a certified date has been extended to include the marking with an electronic document timestamp (Article 81 paragraph 2 subparagraph 3 of the Civil Code). The ordinary written form is no longer the only form reserved for evidential purposes (Article 74 of the Civil Code). The legal character of the Civil Code regulation concerning the electronic form is significantly influenced also by the Regulation (EU) No. 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing Directive 1999/93/EC (OJ EU L 257 of 28.08.2014, pp. 73-114), which came into effect on 1 July 2016.
We encourage all of you interested in the problems related to the written form of a legal transaction to read the article.
