- Act of 1 December 2022 Amending the Labour Law Act and Some Other Acts (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 240), which regulates remote work and introduces sobriety control at workplaces.
- Act of 9 March 2023 Amending the Labour Law Act and Some Other Acts (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 641), which introduces a series of changes with regard to work-life balance and extends the rights and entitlements of employees and their families.
- Act of 7 July 2022 Amending the Penal Code Act and Some Other Acts (Journal of Laws of 2022, item 2600), which significantly increases penalties for wastefulness and managerial corruption (up to 25 years of imprisonment).
- Act of 9 March 2023 Amending the Act on Competition and Consumer Protection and Some Other Acts (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 852), which introduces major changes in the competition and consumer protection area, including the extended rights of the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection, higher liability of parent companies for applying competition limiting practices through subsidiaries, or enabling the imposition of fines on entrepreneurs associations and their members.
- CBAM – Regulation (EU) 2023/956 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 establishing a carbon border adjustment mechanism and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1773 of 17 August 2023 laying down the rules for the application of Regulation (EU) 2023/956 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards reporting obligations for the purposes of the carbon border adjustment mechanism during the transitional period, which introduce the duty to report detailed data on the goods subject to CBAM, including direct and indirect emissions embedded in goods imported to the territory of the EU.
- KSEF – Act of 16 June 2023 Amending the Act on the Tax on Goods and Services and Some Other Acts (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 1598), as well as a number of other acts which refer to the National e-Invoices System (KSeF), enabling the issue and disclosure of structured invoices.
- Act of 26 May 2023 Amending the Act on Local Government, the Act on Social Forms of Housing Development, the Act on Real Property Management, the Act on the Tax on Civil Law Activities and Some Other Acts (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 1463), which assigns to persons availing of land perpetual usufruct the right to claim the land to be sold to them.
- Act of 7 October 2022 Amending the Act on Energy Performance of Buildings and the Building Law Act (Journal of Laws of 2022, item 2206), which introduces the necessity of furnishing buildings in building automation and control systems if it is possible from the economic and technical point of view.
- LkSG – German Act on Due Diligence in Supply Chain (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz), which introduces a series of new expectations on the part of German contractors.
- Act of 16 August 2023 Amending Some Acts in Relation to Ensuring Financial Market Development and Protection of Investors on That Market (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 1723), which introduces amendments in 41 Acts, including the Act on Bonds and the Act on Capital Market Supervision.
- Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 of 31 July 2023 supplementing Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards sustainability reporting standards, which specifies the first set of standards for sustainability reporting.
Compliance
One of the main areas of uncertainty in the business environment are changes in law, both domestic and international, particularly in the European Union, which affect the operations of the Capital Group. New regulations may lead to new obligations in relation to contractors and suppliers, and may also result in new or tightened requirements with regard to production, logistics or corporate matters.
In addition to changes of legislative nature, another area of risk in terms of legal compliance is the interpretation of the law, both at the stage of determining interpretation within the proceedings conducted by state authorities, and changing the established lines of interpretation, for example as a result of case law or the issuance of a legal interpretation by an authority, which changes the interpretation practice in the relevant respect. Further, a failure to timely implement EU laws may also lead to difficulties in applying legal regulations.
Being aware of the existence of risk areas with regard to law compliance, the Capital Group has taken measures to counteract the risk materialisation and mitigating its possible impact.
At the Capital Group, the tasks related to Compliance Management System are centralised in the Risk Management and Compliance Department (Grupa KĘTY Central Area), reporting to the Risk Management and Compliance Director (acting as Compliance Officer). At the segments, the System is supported by the appointed Compliance Coordinators.
One of the key tasks of the Risk Management and Compliance Department is to ensure that the organisation’s activities comply with the changing legal environment, which is carried out through 4 main processes.
4 main processes:
- monitoring of the regulatory environment, focused on identifying new legal regulations in Poland and the EU which may have a direct or indirect impact on the operations of the Capital Group;
- compliance management, which assesses the compliance of the Capital Group activities with legal regulations;
- irregularities management, which has several levels/channels of reporting for persons identifying breaches of regulations, with one of the channels in place ensuring anonymity of the person reporting;
- verification of contractors with regard to Polish, EU’s and UN’s sanctions lists.
Such structured processes and the centralisation of the compliance function make it possible to react to the emerging legal changes in advance, enabling the Capital Group to adapt to the new regulations.