Business activities in the Czech Republic and Poland – comparative differences in the Commercial Register

Having regard to the fact that attorneys of our office at Ostrava are regularly asked as to differences in the arrangement of the Commercial Register in the Czech Republic and Poland, some basic information is provided below.

In the Czech Republic, people are accustomed to a wide scope of available information on persons registered in the Commercial Register being accessible to them online anytime on www.justice.cz. The Czech Commercial Register administered in an electronic form consists not only of the register of the persons registered in the Commercial Register but also the Collection of Documents into which the persons registered in the register are obliged to submit certain mandatory documents. Such documents include for example, documents related to a company’s establishment, annual reports, final accounts etc. (for more details see the provisions of Section 38i - 38j of Act No. 513/1991 Coll., the Business Code, as amended). It is possible to obtain online a complete extract from the Commercial Register, i.e. inclusive of the whole history of a particular company from its incorporation until the present date, even after its deletion from the Commercial Register.

On the other hand, the Commercial Register in Poland (so called Krajowy Rejestr Sadowy) offers in comparison to the Czech web pages www.justice.cz information in an electronic form on the web pages of the Ministry of Justice www.ms.gov.pl only in a limited scope. Only information as to the current state of registration of a company in the Commercial Register, i.e. data on its seat, date of incorporation, persons authorized to act on behalf of a company and information on its respective liquidation, is available. To obtain further detailed data, including the company’s history, it is necessary to personally visit the Court in order to achieve the same. Moreover, the issuance of a complete extract from the Commercial Register is subject to the fee in the amount of 60 zloty and the issuance of a current extract is subject to 30 zloty.