President’s address. Nawrocki signs controversial bill. “Now fuel should be cheaper.”

The president announced that he had signed a law introducing a windfall tax on fuel companies. “I will put an end to the process of holding Poles hostage,” Karol Nawrocki declared.

Presidential address: “The government is responsible for fuel prices.”

On Thursday, President Karol Nawrocki announced that he had signed a bill introducing a windfall tax on fuel companies. “I will put an end to the process of holding Poles hostage. The government bears full responsibility for fuel prices,” he said in his address.

At the same time, he acknowledged that he was not dropping his allegations that the law he had just signed was unconstitutional and would ask the Constitutional Tribunal to review it in subsequent proceedings.

The president recalled the prime minister’s promise: “A festival of shifting responsibility.”

President Karol Nawrocki said that “the state cannot respond with political infighting” to the public’s questions about fuel prices. According to him, these prices are “ the highest ever recorded,” and this affects prices in stores . Therefore, the president stressed, “for several months he has been demanding solutions” that would lead to a “real reduction in the cost of fuel.”

He recalled Donald Tusk’s campaign promises, which stated that gasoline would cost 5.19 zlotys. “The current prime minister insisted that he knew how to do it, that it was a simple solution, that reducing VAT would be enough. However, today he cannot make such simple decisions and instead hides behind legislation,” Nawrocki said.

According to the president, the issue of fuel prices is a “festival of shifting blame, a purely political spectacle for the government ”. “Instead of lowering prices, the government prefers to make money from fuel taxes, because a fuel tax of 9 zlotys means more money in the budget from VAT and greater profits for Orlen, which will then pay the finance minister substantial dividends,” Nawrocki said. It is precisely these “additional budget revenues” that are the reason the government is not lowering fuel prices, although, according to the president, it could do so, as it did during the summer holidays.

Karol Nawrocki signed the bill and set conditions. “The reduction must take effect immediately.”

The president also set out clear expectations for the government “on behalf of the Polish people.” “ The reduction in prices at gas stations must take effect immediately and return fuel prices to the levels promised to Poles during the election campaign. Every zloty collected as a result of this law must be spent on reducing prices (...) Fuel must become cheaper now, and all these decisions must remain in force until prices return to levels that are safe for society,” he stressed.

Karol Nawrocki also expects the government to increase fuel subsidies for farmers and begin work on his bill to reduce fuel companies’ profits. It also proposes the possibility of temporarily exempting fuel sales from the retail sales tax.

Billions of zlotys have been put into the budget.

On September 18, the Sejm (the lower house of parliament) passed a law on windfall profits of fuel companies. This new tax amounts to more than 4 billion zlotys, which will be allocated to a new version of the “Reducing Fuel Prices” program aimed at lowering fuel prices on the market. The law stipulates that fuel producers will pay the state 60 percent of their profits above what they would have earned at a standard margin, while retailers not involved in fuel production will pay 50 percent. The tax will be levied from March 2026 to March 2027. 

This was the government coalition’s second attempt to introduce a windfall tax on fuel companies. In July, President Karol Nawrocki referred the previous bill to the Constitutional Tribunal for preventive review. At the time, the president’s administration argued that the bill violated the principle of non-retroactivity. 

Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that after the president signed the bill, the government would resume the “Reducing Fuel Prices” security program.