Latest / STR Unpacked / Poland Missed The Deadline. Then Deleted The Clause.
Transcript
- Ben: Good morning, welcome to your short-term rental bulletin on the 17th of August. Now, you may remember this story from back in May, we covered it then, but Poland missed the EU deadline for getting everything ready for the new regulation that came in. So three months on, there's still no law, but the bill is meant to fix that. And there's a split in the government down the middle. So on the 14th of July, Poland's Council of Ministers adopted a bill amending the Hotel Services Act. It redefines hotel services to cover any let of less than 30 days, which puts short-term rentals squarely inside the hotel regime. It creates a central register of tourist accommodation run by the Tourism Ministry and every property has to be entered on it. Private flats included. Each one needs written house rules, including provisions on child protection and published contact for the owner or manager. There are penalties for operating unregistered and repeated complaints can get a property struck off the register altogether. Platforms hand over this book in data. That is the part driven by Brussels. Poland is implementing the EU short term rental data regulation, which has applied since the 20th of May. Now, a week before the cabinet vote, the sport and tourism minister withdrew a claim that would have let local councils designate zones where nightly letting was restricted or banned. The funds minister filed a formal dissenting opinion on the 28th of July. The prime minister sent the whole thing back saying his ministers have taken the line of least resistance. and simply transcribe the European rules. And he did not rule out a government amendment before the SESHM takes it up in September. There's a second bill as well. So a private members bill from Polscout 2050 had its first reading back in April and has been sitting in their committee ever since. And that one would give councils the zoning power explicitly. So the registration is no longer the argument anywhere in Europe. We knew that the fight is over and operators lost it. What is still live is who decides where you're allowed to trade. Poland is the cleanest test that we have because Brussels is writing the registration half and the zoning half is being fought out purely domestically. So the register tells you where you are and the zoning map decides whether you exist. Thank you for watching and I'll see you tomorrow.