A Major Milestone in Work on Polish Citizen’s Bill to Protect Children from Pornography

Representatives of the legislative initiative committee „Stop the Pornography Drug” submitted a letter to the Marshal of the Sejm requesting the swiftest possible processing of a citizens’ bill that would protect minors from pornographic content. On January 29, the three-month standstill period (see the standstill principle) imposed by the European Commission in September 2025 on the citizens’ bill (Sejm paper No. 1006) submitted to the Sejm on December 20, 2024, together with the signatures of 212,000 Polish citizens. During these 4 months, Poland could not proceed further with the citizens’ initiative bill. During this times, comments were made in the Technical Regulations Information System (TRIS) procedure (notification number: 2025/0545/PL) by representatives of the European Commission (December 17, 2025). Those comments drewattention to the need to align the provisions with the EU directive of June 8, 2000. Amendments also came from the Italian government (December 29, 2025), which pointed to the similarity of the proposed solutions to the provisions of the Italian regulation of April 8, 2025. Precisely because this procedure was ongoing, on December 18, 2025, at a joint meeting of the Sejm Committee on Digitization, Innovation and Modern Technologies and the Committee on Children and Youth, a decision was made to extend the deadline for submitting the report on the Polish citizens’ bill. However, now that the 4-month suspension period has already ended, the committees should urgently take up the citizens’ bill.

To align the draft bill’s content with the European Commission’s expectations, representatives of the Committee submitted a letter to the Speaker of the Sejm on Thursday, February 5, 2026, requesting that deputies urgently adopt amendments to the bill based on the French solutions. Almost six years ago, France adopted the law of July 30, 2020, which called for blocking minors’ access to pornographic content on the internet. These provisions, together with the implementing decree of October 7, 2021, were, however, challenged, among others, by pornographic websites based in the Czech Republic, which claimed that the law, with respect to entities established in other Member States of the European Union, was incompatible with the EU principle of the freedom to provide services. In a ruling dated October 17, 2024, the Paris Court of Appeal referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The CJEU’s Advocate General Maciej Szpunar delivered an opinion dated September 18, 2025 (which in practice will serve as the basis for a future CJEU judgment), in which he found in favor of the Czech entities. In the meantime, however, France amended its legislation by enacting the Act of May 21, 2024, on the Security and Regulation of the Digital Space (Sécurité et Régulation de l’Espace Numérique, SREN), which successfully passed the TRIS procedure (notification number: 2023/0632/FR), unlike the previous regulations, obtaining the European Commission’s approval. The essence of the 2024 French amendment is the differentiation in the Act’s scope of application as between entities having their registered office in France or outside the European Union (unconditionally) and entities having their registered office in an EU Member State other than France (conditionally, in accordance with the procedure described in Article 3(4)(a) and (b) and Article 3(5) of the aforementioned directive of June 8, 2000). The Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs also recently pointed to the merits of basing Polish regulations on French solutions in a letter dated January 20, 2026, to the Commissioner for Human Rights (ref. no.: DT.WPKE.400.9.2024), emphasizing that “the currently applicable measures providing for the restriction of children’s access to pornographic content in France have successfully completed the notification process”.

Other amendments concern aligning the provisions of the proposed act with a change that occurred in the Polish legal system after the collection of signatures for the citizens’ initiative bill had already begun: the entry into force on November 10, 2024. of the Electronic Communications Law, replacing the previously applicable Telecommunications Law, the wording of which was to be amended in line with the assumptions of the original version of the draft. Until now, the committee had no ability to change the wording of any part of the draft bill—it did not have such authority under Article 36(1c) of the Rules of Procedure of the Sejm, which precludes the submission of self-amendments to citizens’ bills.

In addition to the citizens’ bill, work is still underway on the government bill on protecting minors from access to pornographic content on the Internet (list number: UD 179)—announced by Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs as early as December 2024, but has been continually pushed back. The currently projected completion date at the government stage is “the second quarter of 2026.” The Ordo Iuris Institute took part in the public consultation process for this draft. It participated in the public hearing, submitting its opinions regarding both the first version of the draft in March, as well as the second version of the draft in October,and published an analysis comparing the two. Meanwhile, the citizens’ bill (drafted by the Ordo Iuris Institute), unlike the government’s, has a clear definition of “pornographic content” and is already under consideration in the Sejm. For this reason, it is advisable to prioritize work on this project and to have it adopted by the Sejm without delay, because the harm associated with minors’ overly easy access to pornographic content on the Internet worsens with each passing day.

“The completion of the draft’s notification procedure reopens the way for further legislative work. The amendments we have prepared to the citizens’ bill incorporate the European Commission’s comments and thus restore the Sejm’s key role in further consideration of the bill. The prospect of establishing an effective system to protect children from pornographic content is closer today than ever before,— emphasizes Ordo Iuris lawyer Rafał Dorosiński, representative of the Legislative Initiative Committee “Stop the Pornography Drug.”