There is no explicit legal framework in Poland aimed specifically at identifying, addressing and sanctioning greenwashing in the financial sector. However, specific categories of greenwashing practices in the financial sector may fall within the scope of general regulations relating to the protection of consumers and competition and the prevention of unfair market practices, as well as financial market regulations.

In particular, greenwashing may fall under the scope of the Polish Act of 23 August 2007 on the Prevention of Unfair Market Practices, which defines the term "misleading market practice", as an action that is misleading and in any way causes or may cause an average consumer to take a decision in relation to a contract, which the consumer might otherwise not take. The act goes on to list examples of such actions, which include disseminating false information, disseminating truthful information in a misleading manner, introducing a product to the market in a way that may be misleading, not complying with a code of good practice contrary to public declarations, etc. To a large extent, those categories of actions correspond to the types of actions which are typically given as examples of greenwashing.

Greenwashing may also fall within the scope of certain provisions of the Polish Act of 16 April 1993 on the Prevention of Unfair Competition. In particular, designating products or services in a manner that may mislead clients as to their key characteristics is considered an act of unfair competition. Other acts of unfair competition include the dissemination, for economic gain, of untrue or misleading information about one's business or operations, as well as advertising in a misleading manner that may induce a customer to purchase a product or service.

Finally, identifying, addressing and sanctioning greenwashing in the financial sector may also be based on general sector-specific regulations, enforced by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF). Those include the provisions of the Polish Act of 29 July 2005 on Trading in Financial Instruments, which implements MiFID in Poland, and which requires, in particular, that investment firms act honestly, fairly and professionally in accordance with the best interests of their clients, and that all information, including marketing communications, addressed by the investment firm to clients or potential clients shall be fair, clear and not misleading.

As mentioned above, there is currently no explicit legal framework in Poland aimed specifically at identifying, addressing and sanctioning greenwashing in the financial sector. The general regulations that are in force and that may be used to target greenwashing are largely, but not exclusively, based on EU directives. So far, the Polish regulator, i.e. the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, has not been particularly active in the field of ESG in general and greenwashing in particular. Therefore, national legislation in Poland is currently not supplemented by any "soft law", such as regulatory guidelines and interpretations, pertaining specifically to greenwashing.

The Polish regulations currently in force which seem to be best suited to address the issue of greenwashing appear to be the general consumer and competition protection regulations, rather than financial sector regulations. Even though the general consumer and competition protection regulations do not specifically refer to environmental matters, many of the categories of unfair practices which they sanction directly correspond to the various types of actions that are typically used to define greenwashing. Therefore, it is fair to say that, under current legislation, greenwashing in the financial sector should generally be addressed in the same manner as in other sectors. This is not to say, however, that the general provisions of sector-specific financial legislation cannot be used as well by supervisory authorities to target greenwashing in the financial sector.

There is currently no general definition of greenwashing under Polish law.

The main challenges appear to be:

1. lack of a specific legal framework and definition of greenwashing;
2. lack of technical competencies within the regulatory authorities to effectively identify possible cases of greenwashing, assess the veracity of "green" claims, and thus use the existing legal tools to counteract greenwashing.

Further, the main challenge that we see is that the current legal framework does not define or address greenwashing specifically, even though it does contain instruments (in consumer protection and competition protection law) that can already be used to counteract greenwashing. Therefore, regulatory authorities which already have the power to counteract greenwashing on the basis of those instruments, are not likely to do so in practice, given the lack of a precise definition of greenwashing, and given the lack of in-depth technical competencies which are likely to be required in order to verify the veracity of greenwashing claims.

Act on the Prevention of Unfair Market Practices (PL): https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/download.xsp/WDU20071711206/U/D20071206Lj.pdf 

Act on the Prevention of Unfair Competition (PL): https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/download.xsp/WDU19930470211/U/D19930211Lj.pdf 

Act on Trading in Financial Instruments (PL): https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/download.xsp/WDU20051831538/U/D20051538Lj.pdf