Poland’s Sejm Clears Pre-Court Crypto Freezes in 240-202 Vote

Poland’s Sejm voted 240-202 on 6 November 2026 to pass the Act on Restrictive Measures, a bill that would let the interior minister freeze crypto assets, bank accounts and other property of anyone on a national sanctions list before a court reviews the order, according to the chamber’s record of the 68th sitting. One member abstained and 17 did not vote. The bill is not yet law.

How the freeze would work

The bill treats crypto as financial means that can be frozen, using the definition of crypto assets in Article 3 of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). A listing takes effect the day after it is published in the Public Information Bulletin, Poland’s official notice system. A listed person may complain to an administrative court, but the decision stays in force until a judgment becomes final, and the law sets aside the usual rule that lets a court pause a challenged order while an appeal runs.

Agencies that could request listings include the financial watchdog (KNF), the central bank, the financial intelligence unit and the internal security service, and the interior minister could also list on his own initiative. Grounds include supporting a country already under EU sanctions, serious human rights abuses, or financing information manipulation that threatens Poland’s national security. The government says the bill implements EU Directive 2024/1226 on penalties for sanctions violations.

Enforcement runs through exchanges

For traders, the practical enforcement path matters more than the text. The bill contains no mechanism to obtain the private keys of coins held in self-custody, so a listing order alone does not touch a hardware wallet. It works through exchanges, custodians and other obliged institutions, which face administrative fines if they fail to freeze a listed person’s assets. For EU-facing venues already adjusting to the ESMA stablecoin unwind deadline under MiCA, a parallel sanctions freeze obligation adds another compliance screen on the same customer base.

The freeze regime also sits inside the EU framework the EBA has already used to classify Circle’s USDC as the bloc’s first significant e-money token. Polish authorities would gain a domestic lever that operates faster than any of those EU processes.

The Senate received the bill on 9 November and has 30 days under Article 121 of the Constitution to adopt, amend or reject it, which puts Senate action due by around 9 December 2026. Deputy Interior Minister Czesław Mroczek said in the 3 September parliamentary debate that the existing national sanctions list, created under an April 2022 law, held “554 entries: 119 businesses and 435 individuals”

It then goes to President Karol Nawrocki, who vetoed the separate crypto-assets market (MiCA licensing) bill three times, most recently on 11 June 2026, and whose September override fell short 241-198 against the 266 votes needed.