Polish-German legal and economic relations - NLK LawKancelaria Prawnicza Nowotnik Lipski Szafrański

For Poland, Germany is the largest and most important trade partner. German capital has been present in Poland in large quantities for a long time now. However, particularly in the last few years, there has also been emerging a reverse trend: more and more Polish entrepreneurs decide to enter the German market. This is true not only for the traditional building sector, but also manufacturing, trade and service companies. Moreover, many Polish and German entrepreneurs are tied together within distribution networks. Polish-German legal and economic relations constitute one of the most extensive practices in our law firm.

We provide advice not only to German entrepreneurs in Poland and to Polish entrepreneurs in their relations with German counterparties in Poland. First of all, we support Polish entrepreneurs operating on the German market. This include both those involved in cross-border sale of goods or services, without operating a permanent office in Germany, and those who decide to establish a subsidiary, a branch or a sales representative office. We provide advice on choosing the legal form for the German operations, with particular emphasis placed on tax aspects. We help establish German companies or dependent branches of Polish companies. We represent Clients before state authorities – including tax revenue offices – and courts in Germany. We negotiate and prepare trade agreements under German law, we secure transactions and pursue claims, we conduct litigations in Germany. With our access to German legal databases and resources of scientific libraries, and also with an extensive network of contacts on law faculties in German universities, we are able to draw up opinions on very complex legal issues or participate in litigations concerning those issues. In order to reduce costs of litigation we may, at the Client’s request, resign, partly or in full, from trips to court hearings to Germany, taking advantage of the assistance of local lawyers as litigation attorneys. In particularly complex cases, however, with high value of the matter of dispute (e.g. over 1 million euros), we may, at the Client’s request, undertake and coordinate cooperation with a local, specialised law firm.

We help Polish entrepreneurs participate in public tenders in Germany. Owing to extensive network of contacts with service providers in Germany, our advisory services are not limited to strictly legal issues. We help our Polish entrepreneurs build distribution channels, seek employees and counterparts, develop marketing strategy, acquire office or warehouse premises, develop Web sites, keep books, etc. Irrespective of whether the given service is provided on the basis of our own resources or in cooperation with another advisory and service company, we are always entirely responsible before our Client for its quality and we are the only contact point. All communication is being held in Poland and in Polish.

Apart from aforementioned economic matters, we also represent our Clients in general civil, administrative and criminal cases – including family and inheritance cases, personal cases, resident registration cases, social insurance and other cases – in Germany or where the Polish and German laws meet.

In a similar manner, although in a more limited scope and with higher participation from external companies, we operate in Austria and Switzerland.