Driving licence in Poland

[citation needed] In today's Poland the conditions for entitlement is defined by the law of 20 June 1997 — the Road Traffic Act (Ustawa Prawo o Ruchu Drogowym).

Licence is embedded in a transparent plastic the shape and size of a credit card (85.6 × 53.98 mm; ID-1 format), which makes counterfeiting very difficult and ensures longevity.

[1][2][3] An internal Garda memorandum in June 2007 revealed that, upon consultation with an online Polish–English bilingual dictionary, prawo jazdy was not a personal name, but instead the Polish term for 'driving licence', misidentified by Garda officers as the traffic violator's name due to the phrase being printed at the top right-hand corner of Polish driving licences (with the licensee's name and personal details printed beneath in a smaller text size).

It generated discussion on issues such as cultural ignorance or institutional racism within the Gardaí as a result of changing ethnic demography in Ireland due to immigration from other European Union member states.

[10] In 2013, a common format for driving licences was implemented for all newly issued documents[11] across the European Economic Area (EEA), of which both Ireland and Poland are part.