Proceedings before the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) concerning the resolution of Idea Bank S.A. ended in a significant victory for DZP’s clients. The SAC upheld all the cassation appeals of eight appellants represented by DZP, including the Supervisory Board of Idea Bank S.A., thereby overturning the judgment of the Voivodship Administrative Court in Warsaw of 25 August 2021 and referring the case back for re-examination.

The oral grounds for the SAC's judgment show that the court upheld the appellants' arguments indicating that the Voivodship Administrative Court had failed to examine the issue of implementation of Article 3(3) of Directive 2014/59/EU. This directive requires the Bank Guarantee Fund to structurally separate the function of bank resolution from other BGF tasks, such as guaranteeing deposits or acting as a bank administrator.

The necessity to separate these functions was previously confirmed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case of Getin Noble Bank S.A. (C-118/23), in which the appellants were also represented by DZP lawyers. According to the CJEU, failure to fulfil this obligation may constitute a material breach of law leading to the resolution being declared unlawful.

The SAC indicated that when re-examining the case, the Voivodship Administrative Court should carry out a detailed analysis of how the BGF fulfilled its obligation to separate functions. We expect the Voivodship Administrative Court to carry out the analysis in a similar way to the model already used in the case of Getin Noble Bank S.A.

The case was handled by Partners: Paweł Lewandowski, Maciej Orkusz, Michał Cecerko and Łukasz Wojdalski.