A new way to bypass Poland's Sunday trading ban? Lawmaker calls for tighter rules

Poland's Sunday trading ban may have acquired another loophole. Retailers could be using rules for agricultural retail trade to open entire stores, prompting lawmaker Wioletta Kulpa to demand tighter controls.

Kulpa filed an interpellation with the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. She cited a State Labour Inspectorate inspection carried out on Feb. 8, 2026, at markets in Płock. At one store, employees operated cash registers, served a meat counter and stocked goods while the business owner relied on the exception for entities engaged in agricultural retail trade.

The inspected operator held the required registration for agricultural retail trade. However, inspectors could not establish what share of the store's sales came from products genuinely produced through that activity. Kulpa said current rules may allow businesses to open whole stores after registering even a small agricultural operation.

The exception was intended to let farmers sell food made from their own raw materials, not to enable ordinary market trading, according to the report. Kulpa proposed limiting the exemption to products actually covered by agricultural retail trade, separating the relevant sales areas, creating separate records and documenting the origin of raw materials. She also called for joint inspections and penalties for companies that only appear to qualify. No response to her interpellation had been issued.

The dispute follows another failed attempt to use an exception. The Supreme Court on June 10, 2026, overturned acquittals involving the head of a building-supply retailer who had justified Sunday operations by creating a reading club. The court said the exception applies to shops operating within cultural or educational institutions, not markets that merely add a cultural element to their main business. Establishing a reading room alone, it said, does not change a store's commercial character.