Government Adopts a Deficient Anti-Pornography Bill. A Key Definition Is Missing.

On Tuesday, June 2, Poland’s Council of Ministers adopted the bill on the protection of minors from access to pornographic content on the internet (registry number: UD 179), prepared by the Ministry of Digital Affairs. Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that “our sole objective is to protect our children from addiction and harmful content, including pornographic websites. This content wreaks havoc on emotions and minds.” According to the bill’s explanatory memorandum, “the Act aims to guarantee minors’ safety on the internet by increasing the accountability of electronic service providers for content published in their services. The implementation of adequate mechanisms to protect minors from access to pornographic content — including, in particular, an effective but privacy-respecting age verification mechanism — will ensure a significantly higher level of online safety for children.” Pornographic content providers that fail to meet the age verification requirement will be subject to a financial penalty imposed by decision of the President of the Office of Electronic Communications, ranging from PLN 10,000 to PLN 1,000,000. However, no clarification is provided as to how these penalties will be enforced against entities based in other countries. The Ordo Iuris Institute, in its own bill, proposed website blocking and payment service blocking as the applicable penalty.

The government bill was, however, adopted in a deficient form — it omits a definition of “pornographic content,” which is the key term for the entire Act. During the public consultation and opinion process, no fewer than 17 separate stakeholders called for the inclusion of that definition: not only the Ordo Iuris Institute, but also: the Association of Cable Television in Poland — Chamber of Commerce, IAB Poland, Internet Society Poland Chapter, the Panoptykon Foundation, the American Chamber of Commerce in Poland, the Chamber of Electronic Economy, the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunications, the Society of Friends of Children, the Lewiatan Confederation, the President of the Office of Electronic Communications, the Children’s Rights Ombudsman, the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs, the Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers, Employers of Poland, the Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Public Benefit Activity Council.

The comments submitted by the Ministry of Justice on April 16, signed by Deputy Minister Arkadiusz Myrcha, also contained an unequivocal statement that “the absence of such a definition will undoubtedly result in discretionary and subjective application of the measures provided for in the Act, as well as give rise to significant interpretive difficulties in determining the circle of entities obligated to implement age verification mechanisms, and uncertainty on the part of those obligated as to the scope of content subject to the age verification requirement. This will undoubtedly translate into the number of objections against each blocked domain that, in the assessment of the President of the Office of Electronic Communications, does not ensure the statutory protection of minors from access to pornographic content on the internet, and subsequently into the number of appeals lodged with the civil court. In such cases, the civil court will be obligated to make an assessment in each case, relying on the opinion of a court-appointed expert as to whether the given content constitutes pornographic content.” This is a clear rebuttal of the position taken by the Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs, Michał Gramatyka, who at the joint session of the Committee on Digitization, Innovation and New Technologies and the Committee on Children and Youth on March 11 expressed the controversial view that “pornography does not need to be defined in the Polish legal system, because there is a vast body of case law that allows a very clear line to be drawn between material that is pornographic and material that is not.” In light of the comments submitted by 17 stakeholders and the Ministry of Justice, this position must be firmly rejected as erroneous.

The Ordo Iuris Institute has been consistently highlighting this problem for nearly two years. The necessity of including in an anti-pornography bill such a fundamental element as a statutory definition was publicly raised by Ordo Iuris on multiple occasions — to cite just seven examples: in the explanatory memorandum of the citizens’ bill submitted to the Sejm on December 20, 2024; in statements by Institute representatives during the public hearing on March 12, 2025; in the opinion on the government bill submitted on March 26, 2025 in the course of the public consultation; in the opinion on the government bill submitted on October 1, 2025 in the course of the renewed public consultation; in statements accompanying the submission of a letter to the Deputy of the Sejm on February 5, 2026; in statements accompanying the joint committee session on March 11, 2026; and in the press release of April 22, 2026 accompanying the Ministry of Justice’s opinion. Unlike the government bill, the citizens’ bill has from the very outset contained a precise definition of “pornographic content” — one that draws on Article 9(2) of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime of November 23, 2001, which has also been in force in Poland since June 1, 2015. The Twoja Sprawa Association had earlier referred to it in 2019. Approval of this definition was also expressed by the Sejm’s Bureau of Research and Analysis of the Effects of Legislation, which in its opinion of February 26, 2025 emphasized its compatibility with EU law.

Since the government bill will proceed to the parliamentary process in its deficient form, the primary task for members of the Sejm and the Senate is now to include a precise definition of “pornographic content” in the bill under consideration. The easiest path to success in defending the innocence of children would be to jointly advance both the government bill and the citizens’ bill, signed by 212,000 Poles. To maintain unrelenting pressure on the representatives of political parties sitting in the Sejm and the Senate, the public “Stop the Pornography Drug” petition, which continues the legislative initiative, remains open for signatures.

“It is good that the government has finally adopted its own bill to protect children online. However, in order to make the Act fully effective, a precise definition of ‘pornographic content,’ drawn from the citizens’ bill signed by 212,000 Poles, must be added to it,” notes attorney Nikodem Bernaciak, Senior Analyst at the Ordo Iuris Institute.

See also:

• Poland’s EU-Backed Government Coalition Moves to Scrap Citizens’ Bill Protecting Children from Online Pornography