22OCT

Polish Sejm lets blocks ban short lets

3 min read

16:46UTC

Poland's Sejm voted 407 to 24 to let a housing community ban short lets in its own building from 2028. The bill now goes to the Senate.

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Key takeaway

Polish housing communities would gain a building-level ban from 2028 if the bill becomes law.

Poland's Sejm, the lower house, passed its short-let act on 8 October by 407 votes to 24, with nine abstentions⁠¹. The bill goes next to the Senate of Poland, before it reaches the president, Poland's Ministry of Sport and Tourism said⁠². It implements EU Regulation 2024/1028, the bloc's 2024 rule on host registration numbers and platform data sharing, and turns every stay under 30 days into a regulated hotel service⁠³.

Each unit must show a number from CWTON (the central short-let register the ministry keeps) on every listing. Operating without one risks a fine of up to 50,000 złoty (about €11,500)⁠⁴. Most of that is the register the European Commission wants every city to run before it may cap short lets.

The act then goes further. From 1 January 2028 a housing community or cooperative may ban short lets in its building by resolution, and the operator gets six months to stop. A cooperative needs a majority of all eligible voters⁠⁵. At a mayor's request, a gmina (municipal) council may also draw zones that restrict or ban short lets by area, facility or period.

The building-level vote overrides a January 2021 ruling of the Supreme Court of Poland (IV CSKP 20/21) that a community could not ban short lets without a statutory basis⁠⁶. The bill would supply that basis if enacted. The IGHP (Izba Gospodarcza Hotelarstwa Polskiego, the hotel industry chamber) warned that aparthotels could be caught by municipal bans⁠⁷.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Poland is writing its first national rules for holiday lets of the Airbnb kind. The lower house of parliament, the Sejm, has passed the law, and the upper house, the Senate, now has its turn. Anyone letting a home for less than 30 days will be treated like a small hotel. They must register, get a number and show it on every advert. Letting without one can bring a large fine. The bigger change comes in 2028. From then, the residents of a block of flats can vote to stop short lets in their building, and a town council can mark out areas where they are limited or banned. Poland's highest civil court said in 2021 that residents had no such power, so the law changes the rules the court relied on.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Most flats in Polish cities sit in multi-unit blocks run by a housing community or a housing cooperative, a legacy of post-war block construction. A power given to those bodies therefore reaches the bulk of urban housing stock at once, without a single council decision.

The 2021 Supreme Court ruling left residents with no legal tool against a short let in their stairwell. Complaints about noise and key-box turnover had nowhere to go, which built pressure on deputies to write a statutory basis into whichever bill came next.

The EU's 2024 short-let data rule forced Poland to legislate a register anyway. That gave deputies a moving vehicle, and the ban powers rode on it as amendments rather than as a separate housing bill.

What could happen next?

Precedent
Poland would become one of the few EU states to give a building's own residents a statutory power to ban short lets, a model other states writing their registers could copy.
Long term · Assessed
Risk
The Senate may amend the ban or zoning powers, which would send the act back to the Sejm and delay the register.
Short term · Suggested
Consequence
Short-let supply in city-centre blocks may fall from 2028 as communities vote, pushing some hosts towards aparthotel formats outside residential buildings.
Long term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Spain amended its horizontal-property law in 2019 so a residents' community could limit or condition tourist lets by a three-fifths vote. Since April 2025 a new tourist flat in Spain also needs the community's prior consent by the same majority, so the neighbours decide before the town hall does.

Counter-parallel: Portugal's 2023 Mais Habitação package let a condominium assembly oppose a local-accommodation unit by a two-thirds vote. The next government rewrote the regime by decree-law in 2024 and handed most rule-making back to town halls. Owners holding more than half the building's ownership shares may ask the mayor to cancel a registration for repeated, proven disturbance. The mayor decides; the vote does not itself close the let.

Platforms face fines of up to 50,000 złoty for each breach of their data-sharing duty, on top of the same ceiling for hosts who operate without a register number. Three public-safety or public-order breaches within six months oblige the municipality to strike a unit from the register, with a one-year bar on re-registering.

The ban powers only start on 1 January 2028, which gives investors who bought small flats for short letting about two years to plan an exit or a switch to long lets. The cooperative quorum, a majority of all eligible voters with absentees counted, sets a high bar in large cooperatives where many owners never attend.

Consensus view: The Ministry of Sport and Tourism built the act on a reclassification: any stay under 30 days becomes a hotel service, so registration, inspections and fines all sit inside hotel law. The building-ban and zoning powers were added by amendment from Koalicja Obywatelska deputies, turning a data-sharing bill into a land-use one.

Counter-view: The Supreme Court of Poland reasoned in IV CSKP 20/21 that letting a flat short-term stays within the owner's ordinary use of a dwelling, so neighbours could not restrict it. Owners who share that reading can argue that the bill would let a cooperative resolution remove a use the court said belonged to them.

Key tension: Whether a building ban survives a challenge under Article 64 of Poland's constitution, which protects ownership, once the first community votes after 1 January 2028.

Sources:Ministerstwo Sportu i Turystyki·Hotelarz·Dudkowiak & Putyra

Mentions:EU Regulation 2024/1028 →Poland →Mais Habitação →European Commission →Portugal →Spain →Airbnb →Sejm →Senate of Poland →Poland's short-let act →CWTON →Izba Gospodarcza Hotelarstwa Polskiego →Warsaw →Koalicja Obywatelska →Poland's Ministry of Sport and Tourism →Supreme Court of Poland →

First Reported In

Update #15 · Spain prices the owner, not the listing

Ministerstwo Sportu i Turystyki· 22 Oct 2026

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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.