BUSINESS ACTIVITY IN ADMINISTRATIVE AND PRIVATE AND LEGAL ASPECTS AS WELL AS INTERPRETATION AND COLLISION OF STATUTORY DEFINITIONS

Abstrakt

The paper tries to conduct an analysis of the existing definitions of business activity in the Polish legal system. Polish legal regulations assume in their subject matter a statutory concept of business (economic) activity. The term business activity is present in a number of detailed legal acts in an autonomic sense, independent from other also binding definitions. The research methods applied by the author of the paper contain critical analysis of the available literature on the subject, comparative analysis of regulations that govern business activity with respect to linguistic, systemic and functional interpretation. The factor of homogeneity of law with respect to the definition of business activity is also subject of analysis in the paper. There are two kinds of economic law in the doctrine i.e. public economic law (typically of administrative nature) and private economic law which regulates the civil and legal relations. Both categories of law are closely interlinked, because they are both binding and as a whole regulate the functioning of business entities in Poland. Private law regulates property and material relations of legal entities called entrepreneurs who are autonomous in legal turnover and are its equal partners. Public law regulates the relation of authoritative administrative assignment exercised by the State. The right to conduct business activity constitutes a part of public economic law, it regulates the existence of an entrepreneur, while the relations between entrepreneurs are the domain of private economic law. Business entities functioning on the market must meet a number of statutory requirements and act according to provisions of law. They must also fulfil certain obligations for the benefit of the State and other entities in business turnover. Polish regulations in force are not homogeneous with respect to the definition of an entrepreneur and business enterprise. This issue is very problematic, even though the definitions contained in various acts are very similar to one another, yet they are not uniform which, to a large extent, makes conducting business operations more complicated. Confusing legislation in force puts business entities in an uneven light before various state institutions which impose their respective obligations on the entrepreneurs. In the paper the author makes an attempt to systematize various definitions of an entrepreneur in Polish legal regulations; he also points to differences in particular acts and discusses related consequences.