Nowa Lewica to file bill abolishing Church Fund in Sejm on 29 October

Nowa Lewica moves to the Sejm

Nowa Lewica is set to file a members' bill in the Sejm on 29 October 2026 that would abolish the Church Fund (Fundusz Kościelny). According to RMF FM, the bill will be submitted by MPs rather than the government, because the coalition has not agreed on a government version. TVP Info reports the MPs had originally planned to file it in December, but the timetable was brought forward. Marshal of the Sejm Włodzimierz Czarzasty and party politicians are due to present the bill at a press conference at 11:00 that day.

“We cannot wait any longer. The government bill is unlikely to come out of the Council of Ministers.”

Żukowska, who leads the Nowa Lewica club, made the point in an interview with RMF FM. She said her party expects the Civic Coalition to back the bill.

Two years of stalled talks

An interministerial team on the Church Fund, led by Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, began work in mid-January 2024 and has not reached any compromise. Kosiniak-Kamysz has argued that changes should be worked out through dialogue, pointing to the constitutional duty of cooperation between the state and churches. Sources cited by RMF FM say the team is stuck and nothing points to an imminent breakthrough. Nowa Lewica says it made promises to voters, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk has spoken in favour of abolishing the fund, according to Żukowska.

“We made a promise to our voters and intend to keep it.”

What the bill would change

The bill would stop state budget funding 80% of priests' social security contributions. Under the proposal, churches and clergy would each cover half. Members of enclosed orders and missionaries would be treated differently, with the Church paying their contributions in full. Sickness insurance would be mandatory for clergy, but voluntary for enclosed-order members, while missionaries would not be subject to that obligation at all. The Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) would gain power to verify whether a person holds clergy status, and the National Heritage Protection Fund would take over spending on maintaining historic churches, a fund the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage administers.

Background of the fund

The Church Fund was created under a 20 March 1950 act as compensation to churches for land property the state took from them. Its income was meant to be shared among churches in proportion to the property taken. Today most of its spending goes to social security contributions for clergy, a share TVP Info puts at 95% and Gazeta Prawna at 90%. In March 2025 Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, minister of family, labour and social policy, asked for a bill liquidating the fund to be listed in the government's legislative work plan, proposing that clergy and churches each pay half of the contributions. The bill did not make it onto that list.

“We would like this division to be 50 to 50, that is, 50% of the contributions paid by the clergy member and 50% by the church.”