The legislation is the essential activity of the Sejm. Only the Parliament may enact statutes, which have a particular place in the legal system, an unlimited subjective scope and are brought into life using a special procedure of multistage, sequential, contradictory, formal and publicly open nature. And this is the compliance with said procedure, which significantly influences the position of a statute in the democratic State ruled by law.

The legislative initiative is vested with the Deputies, the Senate, the President of the Republic of Poland, the Council of Ministers, and a group of at least 100,000 citizens having the right to vote in elections to the Sejm. The Deputies' bills may be submitted by the Sejm committee or a group of at least 15 Deputies, signatories of the bill. It should be mentioned that as regards the statute on the State Budget, an interim Budget, amendments to the Budget, the statute on the contracting of public debt, and the statute on State guarantees, the legislative initiative remains solely with the Council of Ministers.

The bill should be accompanied by an explanatory statement which has to indicate, amongst others, the estimate of its social, economic and financial effects, sources of finance, if the bill imposes a burden on the State Budget, a declaration about the compliance of the bill with the law of the European Union. Bills presented by the Council of Ministers should be accompanied by projects of basic secondary legislation.

In order to simplify the procedure the movers should indicate their representative who will act in their name during further stages of the legislative process. In the case of a governmental bill, the President of the Council of Ministers appoints one of the ministers to represent the government in discussions on the bill. The movers have the possibility to withdraw a bill presented by them, but not later than before its second reading has been accomplished.

The legislative process starts in the Sejm the moment the bill is submitted to the Marshal by an authorised subject.