The Lower House of the Polish Parliament has voted on the budget law for 2024. 240 MPs voted in favour of the budget for this year, 191 were against and three abstained. The law will now proceed to the Senate, which is due to continue its session on 24 and 25 January.

According to the budget law, state revenues are expected to reach nearly PLN 682.4 billion. It is assumed that almost PLN 603.9 billion will be collected from taxes. The expenditure limit set in the Budget Act is close to PLN 866.4 billion.
The state budget deficit is to reach no more than PLN 184 billion. The deficit of the European funds budget was set at PLN 32.5 billion. The explanatory memorandum to the act indicates that, taking into account the financial plans of the remaining units of the public finance sector, the projected deficit of the finance sector – according to the EU methodology – will total 5.1% of the GDP this year.

“We did not have much time, and yet we managed to vote today, we have this budget. For me it is a great satisfaction because this is indeed, as someone said in the (parliamentary) hall, a budget for the people”, said Prime Minister Donald Tusk after the vote on the budget.

He said that the dispute in the Sejm over the budget was “relatively cultural”. “And in fact it was the last chord of this dispute, in which PiS fought for there to be more money for PiS-related institutions, and the coalition and the government fought for this budget to divert as much money as possible to the needs of people, the needs of patients”, Tusk said.
The bill will now proceed to the Senate, which is due to continue its session on 24 and 25 January. If the upper house proposes amendments, the budget bill will have to return to the Sejm again and, according to the timetable adopted by the Sejm’s finance committee, these would be considered at a plenary session on 26 January. The President is expected, according to the timetable, to receive the budget law for signature by 29 January.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński