Mandate Contract or Service Agreement? Changes from 2026

Mandate contract versus service agreement – what’s the real difference?

Many people, especially school and university students, use the phrase „I work on a mandate contract.” The trouble is that, legally speaking, this very often does not refer to a mandate contract at all, but to an unnamed service agreement, and sometimes even to a specific-task contract.

Civil-law contracts versus an employment relationship

Under Article 2 of the Polish Labour Code, an employment relationship arises only on the basis of an employment contract, appointment, election, nomination, or a cooperative employment contract. A mandate contract, a specific-task contract, and a service agreement, on the other hand, remain civil-law contracts — they do not create an employment relationship and do not provide full employee protection.

Specific-task contract – the end result is what matters

A specific-task contract concerns a concrete result that is to be produced through the contractor’s work.

• The result may be tangible (e.g. making a piece of furniture or a painting) or intangible but objectively assessable (e.g. a graphic design).
• What matters most is achieving the outcome, not simply acting with due diligence.
• The work product must be new, individual and self-contained. No result means no „specific task.”

Mandate contract – legal actions

A mandate contract applies when its subject is the performance of specified legal actions on behalf of one of the parties.

• The mandatary must act with due diligence but does not guarantee that any particular result will be achieved.
• Typical examples include representing someone before a public authority or entering into contracts on the mandating party’s behalf.
• It is this legal nature of the actions involved that distinguishes a mandate from other civil-law contracts.

Service agreement – the most common „mandate contract”

The biggest misunderstanding is that, in practice, it is the service agreement that most people colloquially call a „mandate contract.”

Under Article 750 of the Polish Civil Code, if the subject of a contract consists of actions other than legal actions and is not governed by other provisions, we are dealing with an unnamed service agreement. Why „unnamed”? The answer is simple — it is not directly listed in the Civil Code, which merely states that the provisions on mandate contracts apply to it accordingly. Applying provisions „accordingly” can mean applying them directly, applying them with certain modifications, or not applying them at all.

• The parties have considerable freedom in shaping it, as long as this does not breach the law or principles of social conduct.
• Typical examples include cleaning, childcare, tutoring, and running extracurricular classes.
• As with a mandate contract, what matters most is due diligence, not achieving a specific result.

In practice, it is precisely this contract — the service agreement — that is most often concluded in situations colloquially referred to as a „mandate.” This is an important distinction, since it shows that everyday terminology does not always match the actual legal nature of the contract.

Changes on the horizon

From January 2026, mandate contracts and service agreements will count toward employment tenure. This is a significant change — people who have worked this way for years will qualify sooner for the right to 26 days of annual leave. This puts an end to situations where several years of experience „on a mandate” were not taken into account at all under a first employment contract.

Do you have questions or issues relating to your contract? Don’t act blindly — get in touch with us.