Poland’s lower house of parliament failed on September 4 to override President Karol Nawrocki’s third veto of a crypto-asset bill, leaving the country without a domestic supervisory framework under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, or MiCA. Lawmakers voted 241 in favor and 198 against, with three abstentions — a result 25 votes short of the 266 required to compel the president to sign, according to crypto.news reporting on the vote.
A Threshold That Proved Too High
Polish rules required a three-fifths majority of the 442 lawmakers present to overturn the veto. Because the motion was defeated, the latest version of the legislation cannot advance through the parliamentary process. The bill would have designated the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, known as the KNF, as the country’s crypto regulator and aligned domestic rules with MiCA, the bloc-wide framework that has already applied elsewhere for more than a year. Competing drafts from the government, the president’s office, the Poland 2050 party and the Confederation party had differed over the KNF’s enforcement powers and the financial penalties available to the regulator.
Why the President Keeps Rejecting It
Nawrocki has said he supports regulation of the sector but considers the government’s version too restrictive. When he vetoed the legislation in June, he said lawmakers had addressed only one of the 16 changes proposed by his office. “Bad law does not become good law simply because it is passed a hundred times,” Nawrocki said in a video statement announcing the decision. He has warned that the bill could impose excessive burdens on Polish crypto companies and encourage some firms to operate from other jurisdictions, and he separately proposed a version his office said would offer stronger fraud safeguards without the same costs.
Poland’s Widening MiCA Gap
The latest defeat follows earlier failed override attempts in December 2025 and April 2026. Nawrocki rejected the first version on December 1, 2025, objecting to the regulator’s proposed power to block crypto-related websites; lawmakers backed an override 243 to 192 but still missed the threshold. A second veto followed in February, and that override also fell short at 243 to 191. With the veto now standing, Poland remains effectively the only EU member state without a dedicated MiCA supervisor, a gap that has already pushed some crypto businesses to secure licenses through other EU regulators as the July 1 deadline continued to force smaller firms out of the market.
