Polish bureaucracy - it went to a new level, they ask to pay for search

Polish bureaucracy, something that everybody who has spent any time in Poland will be quite familiar with, but this month for me it went to a new level.

I need a passport for my son who was born in Poland and has a Polish birth certificate. But when we went to apply for his passport I had to pay an extra 50zł so that the passport office could do a search to confirm that he is actually Polish.

Unbelievable but true!

Has anybody got a better one?

They may think that your son already has a British passport.

Or he is registered as British, due to you coming from the UK.

If he had a British passport I wouldn't need a Polish one for him! We did tell them that he's not registered as British and that I'm resident in Poland.

But my point is surely his Polish birth cetificate is enough to prove he is Polish.

Incidently under Polish rules he is allowed to hold joint British and Polish nationality. I don't know if he can hold both under British rules?

Yes, Britain allows dual nationality.

That's right. Dual nationality is allowed.

Well hairball, I was told that, in order to change my status as a submitter of bills when contracting with companies to a VAT operator, I'd have to pay a fee of 170PLN. It's a technicality. My financial advisor was adamant that I had to do it, now he has changed his mind and said that I don't have to. Wow, what confidence I have.

I'm happy with the way it is.

I once had my application for a temporary resident's card rejected because in the photos I'd supplied they could make out a tiny part of my right ear. So I had to make an entirely new application (with new photos of course).

Yes they can be very pedantic about the photos! I spent an hour pointing out that my son was only three months old and in two weeks time he won't look the same anymore anyway! lol

I had to pay 39PLN today for expediting the marriage procedure. The documents were submitted too late so I was happy to pay that. Yes, they have many fees but some are really worth paying. It's not all doom and gloom :)

I can top that.

When I went to get my becikowe (it's a thousand zloty baby bonus) the clerk asked me to prove that I hadn't received it already in my home area. You can apply for it another municipality than where you are registered but then you have to prove that you haven't already received it. I showed her again that my permanent resident is in that town and waited for my dough. She informed me that I had to prove that I had not received British becikowe. As I am American that would be a good feat and I explained that to her. Then she insisted that I prove I had not received American becikowe which for one thing doesn't exist and for another has nothing to do with Polish becikowe. I could see on the clerks face that she realized how stupid what she had just said was and that she was hopelessly incorrect but, god love her, she just kept on going until her supervisor took over and completed the transaction.

Your turn :)

Why, can't you have two passports in Poland?

No it isn't.


Yes he can.

ChrisPoland, super story! Isn't it sad when there were many confirmed cases of Poles double claiming in Britain and Poland? You'd think that they had the paperwork, given that they adore it so much.

Polish bureaucracy is one of the most horrible in whole Eastern Europe.

This bureaucracy is suffocating the country and bringing it down to its knees... :(

Any stories to support your position?

Yeah ! right. I sent 15 seconds in an office on monday. all because the counter was so far away from the door.
handed over a VAT form... got one in return... no queue... that was it.

Well, there was the bare minimum of fuss at the wedding. Limited logistical formalities and done/dusted quickly.

The same as getting the marriage process expedited, hassle free. Still, it depends on the procedure, of course.

IME Polish bureaucracy is a creampuff operation, mostly easy to deal with (and easy to get around). This presupposes of course, that you either know how the system works and have no special desire to reform things (and you know how to be polite in the ways that count).

US bureaucracy has caused me far more problems than Polish bureaucracy.

Exactly, it's a case of knowing the procedures and how they work. We have to accept that Poland operates differently. Some of the bureaucracy in Scotland is terrible.

And worse than in Poland - compare and contrast (like a Higher English paper...!) the difference between contacting government agencies in the respective countries.

Here, if you don't get your dole payment, you go and shout at them in the Urząd Pracy. In the UK, you have to spend half an hour on the phone (at your expense, of course) and try and sort things out.

Or what about registering as self employed? Queue up in Poland at the office, give them the documents, go to the tax office, voila. In the UK? Expect hassle, missing documents and a hell of a lot of stress, especially if they screw up. Don't expect them to actually receive any documents as well - unlike in Poland, where a stamp proves that they were given a copy.

I won't even mention the 18 month waiting time for an EU resident permit in the UK as opposed to the 6-weeks-wait-at-most in Poland.

Polish bureaucracy is mind boggling at times, but it's certainly no worse than in the UK.

As far as my experience goes - you give the Polish what they want and the system is painless. But if you don't know what to give them because you didn't read the instructions (like many!) - then expect trouble.

I remember trying to get a document from East Kilbride. I had to provide a fossilised password which I couldn't remember. They wouldn't allow me anything without it and I had already given it 3 times to the same woman. I made multiple calls and it was just a blank that day. It happens! Sticklers for procedure. I appreciate the need for safety but she knew who I was. The call was monitored and, rather than opt for practicality, she opted for sticking by the anally-retentive procedures.

Yeah, stamps really solve problems here. In Japan, they have a hanko (personal stamp) and Poland has followed suit. Signatures can be forged but having both gives added guarantees/protection.

Also, the Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) set-up in Scotland is terrible. You really have to put yourself in the picture in Scotland, otherwise you are out on your ear and spending the rest of your time chasing shadows. Getting rejections for jobs that I wasn't even that interested in got boring.

And that's one of main problems of Polish red tape - one biurwa has his/her own interpretation of the rules while other biurwa can tell you something quite different.