Poland’s parliament has failed for a fourth time to overturn President Karol Nawrocki’s veto of the country’s crypto market bill, leaving the largest EU member in Central Europe without a designated supervisor for digital assets under the bloc’s MiCA rules.
The Sejm voted 241-198 with three abstentions on Friday to override the veto. The constitution requires a three-fifths majority, 266 votes. Supporters came up 25 short. Nawrocki has now vetoed crypto legislation three times, arguing the proposed rules would overregulate the industry, impose heavy compliance costs and hand authorities excessive power to block websites.
The result leaves a legislative question open that most of the EU settled months ago. MiCA, the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, applies across all member states, but each country must pass its own law naming the authority that licenses and supervises crypto firms. Poland has none.
No MiCA supervisor in Warsaw
The vetoed bill was meant to fill that gap. It would have established Poland’s national framework for applying MiCA and placed oversight of the crypto market under the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, known as KNF.
KNF said on Friday that Poland still lacks a designated authority responsible for supervising the cryptoasset market, despite MiCA being in force. That gap matters in practice. Firms seeking licences cannot map who reviews their applications. Enforcement coordination has no clear institutional lead. Several other member states have already assigned supervisors and started authorising crypto-asset service providers, so companies that want a single EU passport can simply route through them.
Nawrocki has said he supports regulating crypto in principle but considers this particular framework too broad. His office has signalled openness to a narrower bill, though no revised draft has reached parliament. Government allies argue that the president’s three vetoes reflect genuine concerns about website-blocking powers that would let authorities cut platforms off without a court order, a provision civil liberties groups also questioned.
Zondacrypto case shadows the vote
The vote took place as a criminal investigation into defunct exchange Zondacrypto widens. Prime Minister Donald Tusk disclosed excerpts of testimony from a key witness alleging payments and attempts to influence politicians tied to the previous government. The witness alleged a 2 million zloty arrangement, about $550,000, involving a foundation linked to former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro. In separate testimony cited by Tusk, the witness alleged an unnamed person promised to secure a presidential pardon if convicted.
Prosecutors are investigating suspected fraud and money laundering connected to the exchange. In July they merged the case with a probe into the 2022 disappearance of Sylwester Suszek, founder of BitBay, which was later renamed Zondacrypto. In April, prosecutors estimated losses linked to the exchange at no less than 350 million zlotys, roughly $95 million.
The exchange’s Estonian operator, BB Trade Estonia, was declared bankrupt by an Estonian court in August. The first creditors’ meeting is scheduled for September 17. For users and creditors, bankruptcy shifts the focus from tracing wrongdoing to verifying claims and recovering assets, a process that can drag on for years.
What comes next
Lawmakers could attempt another override, but the arithmetic has not improved. The more likely path is a new government bill, or a government ordinance route, to assign supervisory responsibility. Until then, Polish crypto firms operate in a licensing vacuum their EU peers no longer face.
The case has also raised the political cost of weak oversight. A failed exchange with losses near $95 million, testimony alleging political payments, and a bankruptcy proceeding across borders have turned a technical transposition debate into a public accountability question. Supporters of tighter rules argue the Zondacrypto affair shows exactly why a named supervisor with enforcement powers is needed. Critics of the vetoed bill counter that the answer is a narrower law, not broader state powers.
For market participants, the immediate consequence is uncertainty around licensing timelines. Businesses that planned to passport MiCA licences from Poland may file in Lithuania, Malta or France instead. KNF has not said when it expects the supervisory gap to be closed. Another override attempt would require defections on the government side, and nothing in Friday’s vote suggested those are coming.
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