Driving ban and car rentals. A new obligation is just around the corner, experts have reservations

The Ministry of Justice is planning to amend the regulations that will affect entrepreneurs – owners of car rental companies. After the adoption of the act, the customer’s presentation of a driving license (and for an appropriate fee) will no longer be sufficient to issue him a car. Employees will also have to check whether a given driver has a driving ban imposed by a court.

If the rental company misses it, they may be severely penalized.

However, these regulations are not perfect – experts noticed the problems and immediately proposed a solution.

Car rental companies will have to adapt to a completely new reality

The Code of Petty Offenses is to be amended and will be supplemented with an additional provision. The ministry wants entrepreneurs who provide vehicles without first checking whether the customer has an active driving ban to be subject to a fine. – It is not enough to show a blank driving license. Entrepreneurs will have to make sure that the tenant does not have an active driving ban – explained Deputy Minister Arkadiusz Myrcha (quote from the “Rzeczpospolita” daily).

It is worth noting – as pointed out by MS itself – that physical possession of a driving license does not always mean that a given person has the right to drive vehicles. He may have a document even though the court or administrative body has deprived him of the right to drive a car.

However, experts noticed gaps in the new project, including: with 4Mobility. The car rental company pointed out that there are 263,000 cars in the police records today. active bans, and in the first half of this year nearly 46,000 became final. new ones. According to specialists, in the case of a short lease, “fulfilling the new obligation is relatively simple.” “The customer can be checked on the day
car issuance: through the government e-service “Check driver’s rights”, in the mObywatel application or automatically, through systems using the API (interface – editor’s note) of CEPiK (Central Register of Vehicles and Drivers – editor’s note),” they indicated.

However, the problem begins with medium- and long-term leases.

Experts see a fundamental problem here

In the first half of 2026, medium- and long-term rentals accounted for 60%. 4Mobility revenues. “Currently, the company verifies the client when signing the contract. However, the contract usually lasts several or a dozen or so months. If during this time the court imposes a ban on the client, the company, in order to obtain such knowledge, should independently and regularly repeat the check in the register. However, the information available today about the draft amendment does not indicate whether it is enough to check when signing the contract, whether it needs to be repeated and how often,” the company’s representatives pointed out.

Solution? Experts indicate that rental companies could be automatically informed about the ban. “In the draft amendment to the Road Traffic Law, the Ministry of Infrastructure (Dariusz Klimczak’s ministry – ed.) proposes that the owner of a car rented for more than 30 days should report the user’s data, including the PESEL number (General Electronic System for Population Registration – ed.), and that this data should be entered into the central vehicle register. Driving bans are recorded in the central driver register, also next to the PESEL number, and both records form one CEPiK system

Therefore, we can go a step further – when a ban is imposed against a tenant who is a natural person, the system could automatically notify the rental company,” suggested representatives of 4Mobility.