"Six months of silence, and nobody answers our letters asking to speed things up" — one of the most common concerns we hear from clients. There used to be a clear tool for this: ponaglenie, a formal complaint about an authority's inaction. But since 2022, Poland has operated under a special regime where statutory deadlines for legalization cases are formally suspended, and a presidential law signed on 19 February 2026 extended that freeze until 4 March 2027. Here's what that actually means, and whether the usual tools for speeding things up still work.

What the "deadline freeze" is and why it exists

Since 2022, amid a sharp rise in legalization applications, Polish authorities have periodically extended a regime under which the standard deadlines set out in the Code of Administrative Procedure (KPA) don't bind the offices handling:

The official justification is the unprecedented workload on foreigners' affairs departments, largely driven by the surge in applications since the war in Ukraine began. The latest extension, signed by the president on 19 February 2026, pushed the freeze's end date from the originally planned spring 2026 to 4 March 2027.

What this means in practice

Suspending formal deadlines doesn't mean offices stop working — applications continue to be accepted and reviewed. But there are three important practical consequences:

  1. A standard complaint about inaction (ponaglenie) or a court claim over plain delay won't work right now. As long as the freeze is in effect, the office isn't formally missing any deadline, even if a decision has been pending for a year — so there's technically nothing to complain about.
  2. Your status stays legal for the entire waiting period, no matter how long review actually takes, as long as the application was filed correctly and on time.
  3. Predicting an exact decision date has become harder — offices are no longer bound to finish a case within the standard timeframe (60 days for many categories, for example).

Does this mean nothing can be done at all

No — and this is an important nuance that's often missed. In April 2026, the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Poznań reviewed the case of a foreigner who had applied for a residence permit in January 2025: from June 2025 onward, the voivode took no action on the case whatsoever, and letters requesting expedited review went unanswered. The voivode defended itself by citing the deadline freeze. The court disagreed: it found that extending the freeze further after 30 June 2024 raises serious doubts regarding the right to have a case handled without unjustified delay, ruled that the voivode had indeed been inactive, and ordered the office to finish reviewing the case within 60 days of the ruling becoming final (though it did not award separate monetary compensation to the applicant this time).

The practical takeaway: the freeze shields offices from complaints about "ordinary" slowness, but it doesn't give them unlimited immunity in cases of total, unexplained inaction stretching over many months.

What you can actually do if your case has stalled

  1. Make sure your application was filed without errors and with a complete document package. This is still the one lever that directly affects review speed — an incomplete package is the most common reason a case stalls right at the first stage.
  2. Respond promptly to any request from the office — submitting missing documents, appearing for verification — delays on your end get added to the overall wait.
  3. Keep all correspondence with the office, including letters requesting expedited review and the lack of responses to them — this was exactly the key evidence in the case won in Poznań.
  4. If there has genuinely been no action at all on your case for many months (not just "slow, but moving") — it's worth consulting a lawyer about a court claim modeled on the Poznań precedent. It's not a guaranteed outcome, but it's a real path.
  5. If, instead of silence, you received a formal refusal — that's no longer about the deadline freeze, it's about appealing: this path isn't affected by the freeze, and the standard procedure applies (more detail in our article on appealing a refusal).
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Let's check your case status and go over your options

Has your case stalled with no response from the office for months? During a free consultation, we'll assess what's happening with your case and what steps could actually move it forward.

Frequently asked questions

Can I leave Poland while my case is under review? Extended trips can complicate proving continuity of legal stay and obtaining certificates during the process — we recommend checking your individual situation before traveling.

Does the freeze apply to all types of foreigners' cases? No — it specifically covers temporary and permanent residence permits and EU long-term resident status. International protection procedures, for example, actually returned to standard deadlines (6 months, up to 15 in complex cases) as of autumn 2025.

Is there any point filing a ponaglenie right now? Formally, the office can simply reject it by citing the freeze. But sending a letter requesting expedited review is still useful — it builds the evidentiary record for a potential court route, as shown in the Poznań case.