Nawrocki vetoes three bills, including the Electoral Code amendment, and signs eight

Three vetoes and eight signatures

On Thursday, 15 October 2026, President Karol Nawrocki vetoed three bills passed by parliament and signed eight others. His spokesman Rafał Leśkiewicz announced the decisions on X, presenting a summary of the legislative work. The vetoed bills are an amendment to the Electoral Code, an act on the bodies and proceedings governing political advertising, and an act on carrying out judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. The Electoral Code amendment was passed by the Sejm on 4 September and adopted by the Senate at the end of September. The Chancellery of the President issued a communiqué on the package.

What the electoral amendment would have changed

The amendment would have required the State Election Commission (PKW) to publish, each year by 30 November, a notice setting how many MPs are elected in each constituency. That calculation would have rested on Central Voter Register data as of the end of the third quarter of the year. If the PKW failed to meet that duty, the Supreme Administrative Court would have adopted the resolution instead. The bill also lowered the maximum size of a polling district from 4,000 residents to 3,000. It changed the makeup of district electoral commissions, which would have had 4 to 10 members drawn from judges, advocates, legal advisers or notaries. Currently members need higher legal education and a guarantee of proper performance, without any requirement to practise a specific profession. The PKW had urged the president to sign the bill, arguing it would make elections more equal and ease voting for citizens.

The president's reasoning

Nawrocki explained his decision in a recording posted on X. He said deep changes to electoral administration cannot be introduced without a convincing analysis of their effects, nor should they stir social emotions. His main objection was the new way of setting seats, which created a mechanism for shifting seats between constituencies through an administrative notice by the PKW instead of writing the division into the statute. He also argued that changing the rules only a year before parliamentary elections was not acceptable. He put the principle this way:

Elections are the foundation of democracy. Their rules must be clear, stable and inspire citizens' trust.

The ECHR bill

The third veto targeted a bill on carrying out European Court of Human Rights judgments. It would have set out the mechanism for executing those rulings, fixed deadlines for individual steps, and defined the duties of the bodies responsible and how they cooperate. Michał Woś, a PiS MP, criticised the bill during a Sejm debate at the start of September. He described its effect in these words:

The real effect of its implementation is a systemic change, an attempt to shift the weight from the constitution to international case law.

Eight bills signed

The eight signed bills cover consumer protection, energy and water law, and taxation. They include amendments to the act on unfair market practices and the consumer rights act, as well as changes to the renewable energy sources act, the energy law and the water law. The tax package covers personal income tax (PIT), corporate income tax (CIT), excise duty, local taxes and fees, and the civil law transactions tax. A budget-related act for 2026 was also signed. The renewable energy amendment adds support for biomethane plants larger than 1 MW, regulates biogas pipelines, simplifies wind farm investments, and requires plans for events that disrupt information systems.