From the 1st of January 2021, EU citizens and UK citizens will not be able to use the existing EU freedoms in the UK or the EU, respectively. This will hinder their mobility, also related to secondment.

Britons posted to Poland before the end of the transition period and continuing their stay in Poland after December 31, 2020 will be entitled to apply for a new residence permit, issued once for a period of 5 years. The application for a permit may be submitted by December the 31st, 2021.

Until that date, their stay in Poland will be considered legal. The permit will authorize them to perform work without the need to obtain a work permit. The holder of such permit, after five years of legal and uninterrupted stay in the territory of Poland, will also be entitled to submit an application for a permanent residence permit. The period of stay in Poland before January the 1st, 2021 will be counted as a five-year period.

Delegating a UK citizen to Poland after the end of the transitional period will require prior obtaining the relevant permits, i.e. a work permit, visa or residence permit. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, on the one hand, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on the other hand (the Trade and Cooperation Agreement), does not remove this obligation.

However, a work permit will not be necessary in the case of posting a British person who has the right to stay and is authorized to work in the Member State where the employer posting the employee to Poland is located. The obligation to have a basis for legal stay in the territory of Poland will remain valid.

The period of stay of the EU citizen posted to Great Britain will also have an impact on his immigration status in that country. Poles whose posting period to Great Britain began before the end of the transitional period may apply for a special residence status, the so-called settled status, if they show at least five years of residence in the UK. In the case of shorter stays, they can get pre-settled status, granted for a period of five years. Applications for the appropriate status may be submitted until June the 30th, 2021. Acquiring one of them will be tantamount to acquiring the right to work.

Poles posted to the UK after December the 31st, 2020 will have to obtain documents legalizing their stay and work in that country.

Until the content of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement was agreed, the issues related to the social insurance of posted workers remained questionable. According to the trade and cooperation agreement, the insurance contributions of such an employee are to be paid in the country of employment, as long as the period of posting does not exceed 24 months and the employee is not sent to replace another posted worker.

The Trade and Cooperation Agreement is currently under the ratification procedures. It will be provisionally applied by the EU from the 1st of January 2021 until the end of the full ratification procedure.


More in the article r.pr. dr Michała Kacprzyka and Marty Dudczak „Brexit a Social Security contributions: rules on posting of workers under question” for Rzeczpospolita (article of 27 December 2020).