This is the step that currently has teeth, and it is the step almost nobody takes. A skarga na bezczynność — a complaint to the administrative court about an authority’s inaction — costs a 100 zł court fee, requires that you filed a *ponaglenie* first, and can end with the court ordering the voivode to decide your case inside a set period.
The verdict: worth considering if your case is well past a year, your file is clean, and the delay is causing you concrete harm you can describe. Not worth it as a lottery ticket for the compensation, which is discretionary, capped, and not what this remedy is for. And it is the one stage in this whole process where I would pay a lawyer rather than write it myself.
Checked on 2 September 2026. This describes a procedure. It is not advice about your case, and outcomes here turn on facts and drafting.
What the court can actually do
The complaint goes to the regional administrative court (wojewódzki sąd administracyjny, WSA) with jurisdiction over the authority — for the Mazowiecki voivode, the WSA in Warsaw.
Under Article 149 of the Law on Proceedings Before Administrative Courts (Prawo o postępowaniu przed sądami administracyjnymi, PPSA), a court upholding a complaint about inaction or protracted proceedings can:
- Order the authority to issue a decision within a period the court sets. In the judgment discussed below, that period was 30 days.
- State that the inaction or delay occurred, and whether it was a gross violation of the law. This finding is the substance of the remedy and the part that carries forward.
- Under Article 149 § 2 PPSA, impose a fine on the authority in the amount specified by Article 154 § 6 PPSA, or award you a sum of money up to half of it.
The money is worth understanding as a multiple rather than a figure, because it moves every February. Article 154 § 6 sets the ceiling at ten times the average monthly wage in the national economy for the previous year, as announced by the President of Statistics Poland (GUS). GUS announced the 2025 average as 8,903.56 zł on 9 February 2026, so for 2026 the ceiling is 89,035.60 zł for a fine to the authority and 44,517.80 zł for a sum awarded to you. Both are maxima and both are discretionary. Neither is a going rate, and you should not plan around receiving either.
The judgment that changed the calculation
Until this year the honest answer to “should I go to court?” in a Warsaw residence case was “probably not, because the statute has suspended the deadline you would be complaining about.”
Article 100da of the Act of 12 March 2022 on assistance to Ukrainian citizens suspends the running of the deadlines in voivode-handled residence cases, and provides that the voivode does not forward ponaglenia upward. It has run since 15 April 2022 and, after the Act of 23 January 2026 (Dz.U. 2026 poz. 203) in force from 5 March 2026, runs into March 2027.
Then, on 2 June 2026, the WSA in Gliwice decided II SAB/Gl 93/26. The case concerned an application filed in August 2024. As reported by the legal publisher prawo.pl, the court rejected the argument that the suspension prevented it from acting, holding that statutory arrangements under which foreigners cannot obtain real judicial protection against administrative delay — “rozwiązania ustawowe, w świetle których cudzoziemcy nie mogą skorzystać z prawa domagania się realnej ochrony sądowej” — are incompatible with the constitutional right to a court. It ordered the voivode to decide within 30 days.
Read that with the right amount of weight. It is one judgment of one regional court, it binds no other court, it concerned a different voivode from the Mazowiecki one, and the reported account is a summary rather than the reasoning. It does not mean a complaint will succeed. It means the suspension is no longer an obvious complete answer in court, which is a change from last year, and it is the reason this post exists at all.
The sequence, and it is a real sequence
- File a ponaglenie under Article 37 KPA, addressed to the Head of the Office for Foreigners and submitted through the Mazowiecki voivode. Keep dated proof. Without this step the court will reject the complaint — this is not a formality you can skip and apologise for.
- Wait, and gather. Assemble the file the court will read: the application and its date, the confirmation of submission, the certificate confirming the filing if you have one, every summons and every answer with dates, every attempt to get a status update and what came back.
- Draft the complaint, addressed to the WSA and — like the ponaglenie — filed through the voivode, who forwards it to the court with the file and its own response.
- Pay the 100 zł fee. A fixed fee for this type of complaint, as published by practitioners and the courts.
- Wait again. The court is a court. This is not a fast lane; it is a different lane.
What makes a complaint worth filing
Say the honest version. A complaint about inaction is strongest when the delay is long, the file is clean, and the harm is concrete.
Strengthens it:
- A very long wait — well beyond the nine to fourteen months reported as ordinary for Mazowieckie in 2026.
- Nothing outstanding on your side. No unanswered summons, no missing document, no defect you were asked to fix and did not.
- Documented, specific harm: a job offer conditional on the card, a family member who cannot join, travel you could not take, a professional registration blocked.
- Evidence you tried the ordinary route first and it produced nothing.
Weakens it, or kills it:
- No ponaglenie. Fatal.
- The office is waiting on you. If a summons went unanswered, the delay is at least partly yours, and the court will see the file.
- A recent filing. Complaining at month four about a queue that is running at month twelve is not going to be characterised as the authority’s inaction.
What it is not
It is not a way to win the permit. The court decides whether the authority sat on the case, not whether you qualify. A successful complaint gets you a decision, and a decision can be a refusal. If your case has a substantive weakness, forcing it to the front of the queue forces the weakness to the front too. Think about that before you file.
It is not a compensation scheme. The sum of money under Article 149 § 2 is discretionary and capped, and the fine goes to the state, not to you. People who file this remedy expecting a payout are almost always disappointed; people who file it wanting a decision sometimes get one.
It is not the moment to save money on a lawyer. Everything else on this site is genuinely do-it-yourself. This is not. The complaint has formal requirements, the framing of inaction against protracted proceedings matters, and the argument about the statutory suspension is the kind of argument that turns on how it is put. If you cannot afford a lawyer, the migrant-support organisations that provide free legal help are the first call — not a relocation agency, which does not do this.
Where this is uncertain
A great deal, and this is the post where I am least willing to sound confident.
The Gliwice judgment is reported rather than read here, and one regional court’s reasoning about a constitutional conflict is exactly the kind of holding that other courts may decline to follow. Whether the Warsaw WSA takes the same view of Article 100da, on a Mazowiecki file, is unknown to me and I have found no published Warsaw judgment saying either way. If someone tells you confidently that a complaint will succeed in Warsaw, ask them for the case reference.
What is not uncertain: the ponaglenie is a precondition, the fee is 100 zł, and the remedies in Article 149 are what they are. Start there, and get advice before the second step.