The Sejm fell 25 votes short of overriding President Nawrocki’s veto, leaving Poland as the only EU member state without a domestic crypto licensing framework and forcing roughly 2,000 firms into regulatory exile.

Every member state in the European Union has managed to stand up a domestic framework for the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. Every member state except one. Poland, home to one of the bloc’s most active retail crypto markets, remains stuck in a political loop that has now consumed three separate bills, three presidential vetoes, and roughly nine months of legislative time.

On Sept. 4, 2026, the Sejm held its third override vote. The result was 241 in favor, 198 against, and three abstentions from the 442 lawmakers present. Under Poland’s constitution, an override requires a three-fifths supermajority, which meant 266 votes. The gap was 25. Not enormous, but enough to kill the bill and send lawmakers back to the drawing board for the fourth time.

The stakes are no longer abstract. MiCA’s transitional period ended on July 1, 2026, and every crypto-asset service provider operating in the EU must now hold a license issued by its home regulator or by a regulator in another member state. Poland’s KNF cannot issue those licenses because the Sejm never passed the legislation that would give it authority to do so. The result is a country where roughly 2,000 registered crypto firms exist in a regulatory dead zone, unable to get licensed at home and increasingly looking abroad.

What the bill actually contained

The legislation, formally titled the Act on Crypto-Asset Markets, would have created a national supervisory framework aligned with MiCA. Its core provisions fell into three categories: licensing, enforcement, and consumer protection.

On the licensing side, every crypto-asset service provider operating in Poland would have needed formal authorization from the KNF. This included exchanges, custodians, portfolio managers, transfer service providers, and platforms offering advice on digital assets. Token issuers would have faced a parallel set of disclosure and registration requirements. The process mirrored frameworks already in force across Germany, France, and the Netherlands, where regulators have been granting MiCA licenses since late 2025.

Enforcement powers were the most contested piece. The KNF would have gained authority to suspend transactions for up to 96 hours, with the possibility of extension. It could impose financial penalties on service providers and token issuers. Supervisory fees were capped at 0.4% of revenue for crypto service providers and up to 0.5% for token issuers. And in the provision that drew the most criticism from the president’s office, the KNF would have been empowered to block access to websites associated with unlicensed or fraudulent crypto operations.

Consumer protection measures included mandatory disclosure requirements for token issuers, rules around marketing communications, and criminal liability for certain violations connected to token issuance and the handling of client assets.

None of this was unusual by European standards. Germany now has 79 authorized crypto-asset service providers operating under nearly identical rules. France has licensed several major platforms. Even smaller jurisdictions like Malta and Cyprus moved faster. The bill Poland kept voting on was, by the standards of European crypto regulation, conventional.

Three vetoes, one president, zero progress

The legislative history reads like a recurring nightmare for Poland’s crypto industry.

The first version of the bill passed the Sejm in late November 2025. President Nawrocki vetoed it on Dec. 1, 2025. Lawmakers attempted to override the veto four days later on Dec. 5 and fell short, voting 243 to 192. The threshold was the same 266 votes.

A revised bill made its way through the legislative process and passed again. Nawrocki vetoed it on Feb. 12, 2026. The override attempt came on April 17 and failed once more, this time 243 to 191. The government had picked up exactly zero additional votes.

The third iteration arrived with what supporters described as significant revisions. Nawrocki disagreed. When he rejected it on June 11, 2026, he noted that lawmakers had addressed only one of the 16 changes his office had proposed. His response was blunt: “Bad law does not become good law simply because it is passed a hundred times.”

The September override vote produced 241 votes in favor, two fewer than either previous attempt. Whatever momentum the government had was actually eroding.

The president’s case against regulation

It would be easy to dismiss Nawrocki’s position as obstructionism. His critics in the governing coalition certainly do. But the president’s objections are specific enough to deserve examination on their merits.

His central argument is that the bill as written would impose costs and restrictions that disproportionately burden smaller Polish firms while doing little to prevent the kinds of fraud that have already occurred. The KNF’s proposed power to block websites is the example he returns to most often. In Nawrocki’s framing, that authority is a blunt instrument that could be used against legitimate businesses, particularly smaller operators without the legal resources to challenge an administrative takedown.

The supervisory fee structure is another sore point. A cap of 0.4% of revenue may sound modest, but for early-stage companies operating on thin margins, it represents a meaningful cost. Nawrocki’s office has argued that fees at that level, combined with the compliance overhead of full KNF supervision, would push smaller firms to register in jurisdictions with lighter regulatory burdens.

There is also a philosophical dimension. Nawrocki has positioned himself as a defender of Poland’s tech entrepreneurship culture. He argues that aggressive regulation of an emerging industry could stunt growth precisely when Poland should be competing for crypto talent and investment. His office submitted an alternative proposal that it described as offering stronger safeguards against fraud without imposing the same costs on legitimate companies. The governing coalition has not taken up that proposal.

The president’s position is not without political calculation. His opposition to the crypto bill plays well with a libertarian-leaning segment of Polish voters skeptical of state intervention in technology markets. Whether that politics serves Poland’s crypto industry or simply delays its integration into the European regulatory framework is the question that refuses to go away.

The Zondacrypto backdrop

The political fight over crypto regulation is playing out against the most serious exchange scandal in Polish history. Poland had already become the EU’s lone holdout after earlier vetoes, and the Zondacrypto collapse has turned an embarrassing distinction into a full-blown crisis. Zondacrypto, formerly known as BitBay and once the largest crypto exchange in Central and Eastern Europe, has collapsed in spectacular fashion.

The platform’s founder, Sylwester Suszek, disappeared in March 2022 under circumstances that remain unclear. The exchange continued operating under new management until April 2026, when it went offline and customer withdrawals stopped. Polish prosecutors have since charged five suspects in a probe that initially focused on fraud and money laundering involving at least 350 million zlotys, roughly $96 million. Investigators now say the total exposure may run as high as 2.4 billion zlotys, approximately $535 million, as the victim count surpasses 30,000.