Retirement

Steps

1. Before leaving, request your S1 form from the fund that pays your pension, if you do not have a Polish pension.
2. Register your stay if you stay more than 3 months (factsheet PL-SEJOUR-TOUS-001): as an inactive person, you show sufficient resources and your health insurance.
3. Have your S1 registered at the NFZ regional branch (oddział wojewódzki NFZ): you are then treated like a Polish insured person (factsheet PL-SANTE-TOUS-001).
4. Check your tax situation: by becoming a Polish tax resident, you declare your worldwide income in Poland, but the tax treaty decides who taxes your pension (factsheet PL-IMPOTS-TOUS-001). Example: with France, private pensions are taxed in the country of residence, public pensions follow a separate rule.
5. If you have worked in Poland, claim your Polish pension at the ZUS office (Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych, social insurance institution) for your place of residence, with the ZUS EMP form and the ZUS ERP-6 periods questionnaire. If you have worked in several EU countries, you file a single application, with the pension body of your country of residence or of the country where you last worked; if you have never worked in your country of residence, it forwards it to the last country where you worked, which centralises the contribution records from all countries.
6. At the end, each country's decision is explained to you in a special document, the P1 form, which is sent to you.

Documents

• S1 form from your pension fund.
• Identity document, proof of resources (pension statements).
• For a Polish pension: ZUS EMP and ZUS ERP-6 forms, supporting documents for the periods worked in Poland and abroad.

Costs and timelines

• Legal age: 60 for women, 65 for men, whatever the year of birth, since 1 October 2017.
• Calculation (born after 1948): the pension depends mainly on the total retirement contributions accumulated on your ZUS account (and, where applicable, in an open pension fund, OFE), plus an initial capital for periods before 1999.
• Guaranteed minimum amounts since 1 March 2026 (ZUS, notice published in the Monitor Polski, the official gazette), gross per month:
  • old-age pension, total incapacity pension, social pension and survivor's pension: PLN 1,978.49 (compared with PLN 1,878.91 on 1 March 2025);
  • partial incapacity pension: PLN 1,483.87;
  • total incapacity due to a work accident or an occupational disease: PLN 2,374.19; partial incapacity in this case: PLN 1,780.64. To be entitled to the top-up to the minimum, you must have reached the legal age and show at least 20 years of contribution and equivalent periods for a woman, 25 years for a man (art. 87 of the FUS pensions Act; non-contribution periods are counted up to one third of the contribution periods, art. 5). For a person who lives in Poland and whose Polish pension is granted under an international agreement, the law ensures that the sum of the Polish pension and the foreign pension is not lower than the minimum (art. 85). The European aggregation rule allows insurance periods from other EU countries to be counted to open a pension right; for the 20 or 25 years condition for the top-up to the minimum, ask ZUS for confirmation.
• Indexation: every 1 March, automatically.
• Recommended lead time: ask for information on your pension at least 6 months before the date you want when you have worked in several countries (Your Europe).

Common pitfalls

• Coming without an S1: the European health insurance card only covers temporary stays; without a registered S1, you will have to insure yourself voluntarily with the NFZ.
• Forgetting to declare your foreign pension in Poland: even if taxed in your country of origin, it may have to appear in your Polish return (factsheet PL-IMPOTS-TOUS-001).
• Thinking short periods are lost: a country may pay nothing for less than one year of contributions, but these months count in the calculation of the other countries.
• Changing country of residence without telling your fund: the S1 and the payment of the pension depend on it.

What changes by country of origin

• EU, EEA, Switzerland: aggregation of periods and S1, according to the European coordination rules.
• British citizens (Scots included): the European rules no longer apply since 1 January 2021, except for people covered by the Withdrawal Agreement; for the others, a protocol of the EU–UK trade agreement ensures a similar but less complete coordination (Commission guide). Check with your British fund whether an S1 can be issued to you.
• Taxation: each treaty is different; the list and the texts are on podatki.gov.pl (factsheet PL-IMPOTS-TOUS-001).