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The 2023 amendment inserts a new legal category — the złoże strategiczne (strategic deposit) — into the Polish Geological and Mining Law (Prawo geologiczne i górnicze, originally Dz.U. 2011 poz. 981). Prior to the amendment, all documented mineral deposits were governed by a single licensing framework with no distinction between commodities of ordinary economic interest and those of critical national importance. The strategic-deposit designation closes that gap.
Designation process: The Minister of Climate and Environment may, by administrative decision (decyzja administracyjna), declare a documented mineral deposit "strategic" on two alternative grounds: (i) its economic significance to Poland's mineral-resource base, or (ii) national security interests. The designation is not limited to any specific commodity — the eligible list spans the full critical-minerals and energy-fuels spectrum: hydrocarbons, hard coal, lignite, coal-bed methane (existing as associated mineral), metal ores (excluding bog iron ores), native metals, radioactive ores, native sulphur, rock salt, sylvinite, potassium-magnesium salts, gypsum and anhydrite, precious stones, rare-earth elements, and noble gases.
Spatial-planning override: Once a deposit is designated strategic, the Minister's decision may require the relevant gmina (municipal government) to amend its land-use planning documents — the studium uwarunkowań i kierunków zagospodarowania przestrzennego and the miejscowy plan zagospodarowania przestrzennego — to prohibit permanent development or any land use that would preclude future extraction. This is a direct legal mechanism for asserting central-government authority over local spatial planning in resource-rich areas, reversing the pre-2023 default in which local planning approvals could effectively sterilise economically significant deposits.
Mandatory 2-year review window: The amendment imposed a statutory obligation on the Minister to initiate ex-officio proceedings for every mineral deposit documented in the national geological database (Central Geological Database, CBDG) before 28 October 2023. This creates a systematic, time-bounded review of Poland's entire documented resource base against the strategic-deposit criteria, with the 2-year window expiring on or around 28 October 2025.
Geological-permitting acceleration: The amendment also implemented 2021/2022 EU-driven reforms streamlining the issuance of concessions for geological documentation work (prace geologiczne), reducing procedural stages for low-risk surveys.
The strategic-deposit framework is Poland's national-law implementation of the conceptual architecture underlying the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA, Regulation (EU) 2024/1252). EU CRMA Article 9 establishes an administrative-acceleration regime for "strategic projects" — fast-track permitting, single-point-of-contact, and priority status for critical-raw-material projects of EU-level strategic significance. Poland's złoże strategiczne designation power is the foundational precondition for PL nominations to the EU strategic-project pipeline: a deposit must first be designated nationally before it can realistically be advanced under CRMA Article 9.
Key PL deposit candidates that sit upstream of this statute:
This statute is the foundational authorising instrument upstream of:
2025-07-24-poland-investment-control-law-permanent — permanent FDI screening regime that applies with elevated scrutiny to entities acquiring interests in strategic-deposit areas2025-07-25-poland-special-act-strategic-defence-investments — defence-infrastructure fast-track that interacts with strategic-deposit spatial-planning decisions at contested sites