Polish Social Insurance Institution’s challenges to pregnancy medical certificates increasingly being overturned by courts, with appeals more than doubling in recent years.
Rising Legal Challenges
A few years ago, a decision by the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) to challenge a medical certificate and withdraw sickness benefit rights from a pregnant woman was practically the end of the matter. Today, it increasingly becomes the beginning of it.
Appeals against decisions issued after controls of certificates with code “B” in many cases result in the court changing the ruling.
Growth in Appeals
The scale of this phenomenon is visible in data provided to the DGP editorial office. It shows that in the years 2023-2025, the number of appeals against decisions issued after controls of medical certificates for pregnancy more than doubled – from 33 to 70 per year.
Benefit Disputes
This concerns situations where ZUS determined that the e-ZLA was used contrary to its purpose, and consequently deprived the right to benefits for a specified period.
Although compared to the total number of controls, appeals constitute a small percentage, the direction of change is unequivocal.