An agricultural company under Polish law – the need for regulation and a regulatory model

Abstract

This article argues that there is a fundamental gap in Polish agricultural law with regard to legal entities. The existing Act on shaping the agricultural system does not establish a general category of qualified collective agricultural entity, as its basic model remains the individual farmer – a natural person who meets the requirements set out in Article 6 of the Act. The exceptions provided for other entities are ad hoc in nature and do not constitute a coherent status for ‘collective farmers.’ The article analyses three European models: the Italian mechanism for the functional classification of collective entities under the category of imprenditore agricolo professionale, the Spanish model of the separate sociedad agraria de transformación, and the French system of GAEC (groupement agricole d’exploitation en commun) and EARL (exploitation agricole à responsabilité limitée) with its principle of transparency. Based on these models, the author proposes two de lege ferenda proposals: a minimal proposal, which is a mechanism for the agricultural classification of existing collective entities by decision of the National Support Centre for Agriculture, based on the Italian model; and a maximal proposal, which is a statutory type of an agricultural enterprise with transparency principles and safeguards against abuse, based on the French model. These proposals complement an earlier suggestion to introduce the concept of an agricultural company into the Civil Code, whereby an agricultural company is defined as an entity that operates an agricultural enterprise.