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On 17 June 2025, the Council of Ministers adopted a draft act submitted by the Minister of Infrastructure amending the Road Traffic Law and the Act on Compulsory Insurance, the Insurance Guarantee Fund and the Polish Motor Insurers’ Bureau (deregulation draft).

The draft aims to adapt the regulations on testing and registration of vehicles equipped with automated functions to the needs resulting from technological progress and the implementation of innovative solutions in vehicles to support drivers. Changing the regulations in this area will facilitate the development of modern technologies, in particular it will allow for safe research on vehicles that use automatic steering and control functions. The actions taken are intended to enable the safe implementation of increasingly available innovations on the market into road traffic, without worsening safety conditions and to introduce legal solutions that will ultimately allow for the implementation of highly automated and autonomous vehicles on Polish roads.

The work that led to the development of the project was undertaken thanks to activities undertaken for many years by the Motor Transport Institute, in particular the implementation of the AV-PL-ROAD project “Polish road to road transport automation” in 2018-2021 and the activities undertaken by the Autonomous and Connected Vehicles Competence Center (CK:PAP), which was established as part of this project. The AV-PL-ROAD project consortium included: the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Motor Transport Institute and the Warsaw University of Technology.

The most important changes included in the draft act amending the Road Traffic Act and certain other acts:

• introducing a definition of an automated vehicle as a vehicle equipped with steering assistance systems that can control certain driving functions, such as lane keeping or automatic braking, and a definition of a fully automated vehicle as a vehicle capable of autonomous driving without the participation of a driver,
• introducing facilities for testing vehicles that use automatic steering and control functions, including the introduction of the possibility of conducting research on public roads involving automated and fully automated vehicles, provided that road traffic regulations are observed, road safety is ensured and a permit to conduct research is obtained,
• defining the scope of competences and responsibilities of the National Research Coordinator and introducing a definition of the research organiser, i.e. the entity conducting work on automated vehicles in order to test and assess the automatic functions used in them,
• establishing clear rules for obtaining permits to conduct research, taking into account, among others, vehicle automation level, number of vehicles and research area,
• changes to professional registration, a special type of registration that allows companies involved in the production, testing, sale or repair of vehicles to temporarily allow them to be used on the road without the need for standard registration of each vehicle, including:
  • to extend the possibility of professional vehicle registration also to entrepreneurs who deal in used vehicles,
  • to facilitate test drives without the need for re-registration.

The new regulations, which are deregulatory and innovative in nature, are to enter into force 6 months after the date of publication in the Journal of Laws.

Sources (in Polish):
Draft act amending the Road Traffic Law Act and the act on compulsory insurance, the Insurance Guarantee Fund and the Polish Motor Insurers’ Bureau (deregulation project) https://www.gov.pl/web/premier/projekt-ustawy-o-zmianie-ustawy–prawo-o-ruchu-drogowym-oraz-ustawy-o-ubezpieczeniach-obowiazkowych-ubezpieczeniowym-funduszu-gwarancyjnym-i-polskim-biurze-ubezpieczycieli-komunikacyjnych

Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Government Decisions, https://www.gov.pl/web/premier/projekt-ustawy-o-zmianie-ustawy—prawo-o-ruchu-drogowym-oraz-ustawy-o-ubezpieczeniach-obowiazkowych-ubezpieczeniowym-funduszu-gwarancyjnym-i-polskim-biurze-ubezpieczycieli-komunikacyjnych-projekt-deregulacyjny

Chancellery of the Prime Minister, List of legislative and programmatic works of the Council of Ministers, https://www.gov.pl/web/premier/projekt-ustawy-o-zmianie-ustawy–prawo-o-ruchu-drogowym-oraz-niektorych-innych-ustaw8