Minister raises pay for animal ethics committees and rewrites meeting limits

Poland’s Minister Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego has raised the fees paid for sitting on the animal-experimentation ethics committees and rewritten the rules on how often those bodies may meet. The change is set out in a regulation published in the Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej on 25 September 2026 as Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1248, signed on 22 September 2026 by minister M. Kulasek. It takes effect on 1 October 2026.

The amendment modifies the regulation of the Minister Edukacji i Nauki of 7 December 2022 on the Krajowa Komisja Etyczna do Spraw Doświadczeń na Zwierzętach and the local ethics committees for animal experiments (Dz.U. 2025 poz. 638). It was issued under Article 41 of the Act of 15 January 2015 on the protection of animals used for scientific or educational purposes (Dz.U. 2023 poz. 465, as amended by Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1795). The committees are the bodies that review and approve projects in which scientists use animals for research or teaching.

New per-meeting rates

The regulation replaces the two provisions that set remuneration for participation in a committee sitting:

• Krajowa Komisja Etyczna do Spraw Doświadczeń na Zwierzętach: 1,200 zł for the chair, 900 zł for the other members (§ 19).
• Local ethics committees: 900 zł for the chair, 700 zł for the other members (§ 22).

The rates are paid per meeting attended, not as a monthly salary, and apply to both the national body and the local commissions operating at research institutions.

Meeting frequency and extra sessions

The amendment also rewrites the provisions governing how often the committees sit:

• The national commission works at meetings convened as needed, no less frequently than once a quarter and no more frequently than once a month.
• A local commission works at meetings convened as needed, no less frequently than once every two months and no more frequently than twice a month.
• In both cases, the chair may convene an additional meeting in a given month when this is justified by the need to keep to the deadline for examining a case.

Justification required for additional sittings

Two further changes tighten the paperwork around those extra meetings. A new point 3 is added to § 20(3) and to § 23(3), so that a request to convene a meeting must now also contain the justification for calling the additional sitting referred to in § 11(1), second sentence, for the national commission, and in § 16(1), second sentence, for the local commissions. The justification requirement is the counterpart of the new power given to the chairs to add a session beyond the standard rhythm.

The regulation contains no transitional provisions and no separate publication of the new rates beyond the amended paragraphs themselves.

For researchers who run experiments on animals, the practical effect is twofold: committee members are paid more for each sitting, and the calendar of sittings is now bounded at both ends — a floor that prevents long gaps in case handling and a ceiling that limits how often the bodies can be convened. Because the new rates and the new meeting rules both apply from 1 October 2026, institutions and committee chairs have less than a week between publication and entry into force to adjust their schedules and their payment paperwork.

Source: Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, no. 1248 of 25 September 2026, section I (official reference: Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1248).