Today, 7 August 2026, Poland's so-called "franc law" takes effect — signed by President Karol Nawrocki on 17 July. It is the biggest procedural change in years for people repaying Swiss franc mortgages, though, as I'll explain, not quite the change many of them were hoping for. The law hands franc borrowers no new weapon in court. What it does give them is something many have waited years for: an end to chasing courts for permission to stop paying.
What exactly changes from today
Until now, anyone who sued their bank to have a franc mortgage contract declared invalid had to file a separate motion for interim protection if they wanted to stop paying installments while the case was pending. Courts took weeks, sometimes months, to rule on it, could reject it outright, or demand extra documents — and meanwhile the borrower kept paying installments on a contract they had just argued in court was defective. It was an absurd situation: the bank kept collecting money under an agreement a court might soon rule void.
The new law removes that requirement. From today, the moment a lawsuit is served on the bank, the obligation to pay installments becomes unenforceable by operation of law — no separate motion, no waiting for a court ruling on the matter. This status lasts until the case is finally resolved. That is a genuine qualitative shift: instead of weeks of uncertainty and yet another court fee for a motion, the mechanism now works automatically.
Who the law covers
It's worth stressing that the group covered by the new rules is wider than the colloquial term "franc borrower" suggests. The law applies not only to the main consumer-borrower, but also to:
- their legal successors — for example, heirs who inherited the obligation along with the property,
- co-borrowers who signed the agreement jointly with the main debtor,
- guarantors who secured repayment with their own assets,
- and owners of the mortgaged property, even if they are not formally a party to the loan agreement.
That matters in practice, because many franc cases, years on, now involve a different set of people than at signing — children who took over a parent's loan, divorced spouses, or people who bought a property that came with a mortgage attached. All of them now benefit from the same automatic suspension mechanism.
What the law does NOT change — and this is the key point
Here we reach the part that's easy to miss amid the media noise: the law does not improve a borrower's odds of winning against the bank. It doesn't change the rules by which courts assess whether indexation or denomination clauses in a contract are unfair. It doesn't touch the Civil Code. And it doesn't alter, even slightly, the line of case law set by the Court of Justice of the EU that Polish courts have relied on for years when voiding franc contracts or stripping out their currency clauses.
This is a pure procedural reform, whose main goal — as the Ministry of Justice itself has stated — is to unclog the courts. And there really are a lot of these cases: according to Justice Ministry data for Q1 2026, franc-loan disputes account for around 25% of backlogged civil cases in regional courts and as much as 70% in appellate courts. In 2025 alone, courts closed a record roughly 127,000 franc cases, yet about 170,000 proceedings are still pending. In other words, the law treats the symptom — overloaded courts and months of uncertainty over installments — not the underlying disease, which is the dispute over contract validity itself.
Reactions from the market: praise and criticism
The final shape of the law was the subject of a sharp dispute in parliament over the rules for offsetting mutual claims between banks and borrowers. The Polish Bank Association (ZBP), through Katarzyna Urbańska of its legal and legislative team, defended the special set-off mechanism contained in the original draft, arguing that it was meant to genuinely allow the bank and the client to settle accounts in a single proceeding and unclog the courts. Borrower representatives and Poland's Ombudsman (RPO) opposed the provision, however, warning that it could violate the constitutional principle of two-instance court proceedings (Article 176(1) of the Constitution) and conflict with EU Directive 93/13 on unfair terms in consumer contracts.
Under that pressure — including from part of the ruling coalition — the Ministry of Justice ultimately abandoned the idea, and parliament removed the special set-off mechanism from the final version of the law. Under the enacted rules, a bank may only raise a set-off claim under general rules, and Article 5 of the law shifts court costs onto the bank for the part of a consumer's claim dismissed because of a set-off raised only after the lawsuit was filed. That is a real win for borrower advocates, though some lawyers representing borrowers note the law could still hurt the business model of law firms specializing in franc cases, which until now earned fees precisely from handling interim-protection motions that are now redundant.
What about euro and dollar loans?
Here a common misconception needs correcting. Even though euro or dollar loan agreements often contain exactly the same defective indexation clauses as franc loans — and banks lose those cases in court at a similarly high rate — the new law does not cover those borrowers. The rules were drafted exclusively for contracts denominated or indexed to the Swiss franc. People repaying euro or dollar loans still have to file the classic motion for interim protection and wait for a court ruling if they want to stop paying installments during litigation — exactly as franc borrowers had to do until yesterday. This is one of the most frequently criticized aspects of the new rules, since it's hard to find a rational justification for why an identical legal problem was addressed for only one currency.
What this means in practice, depending on your situation
If you have an ongoing franc-loan case, check the date your lawsuit was served on the bank — from that moment, installments become automatically unenforceable, and you don't need to file anything extra. If you're only planning to sue, it's worth checking with a lawyer whether and when it makes sense — the law doesn't change the substantive assessment of your contract, so the fundamental decision remains the same as before.
If you're repaying a euro or dollar loan, the new rules don't apply to you — you still need to go through court to suspend payments. It's worth watching further legislative work, since pressure to extend similar protection to these borrowers is unlikely to disappear.
And if your franc case is wrapping up, or has just ended in a settlement or a ruling, and you're planning a new home loan, this is a good moment to compare current mortgage offers — after years of turmoil, the market looks very different today than when you first took out a franc loan. If suspended installments have freed up money in your household budget, it's also worth considering whether to park it temporarily — whether in a term deposit or a flexible savings account — rather than letting it sit idle in a current account. And if you're reorganizing your finances after years of disputing with your bank, it's worth checking current personal account offers too — sometimes switching your everyday bank is a simpler win than any court case.
Summary
The franc law that took effect on 7 August 2026 is an important but limited change. It relieves franc borrowers — and those legally connected to them — of the need to go to court for permission to suspend payments, a real relief for both wallets and nerves during litigation. But it changes nothing about whether a given contract will actually be voided, and it doesn't extend protection to borrowers in other currencies. If you're in the middle of a franc case, check your lawsuit's status. And if you're planning your next financial move — whether a new mortgage or a way to save the money freed up from installments — compare the options available before you decide.