About

The seven-strong legal department at Volkswagen Poznań is led by head of legal and public policy Tobiasz Adam Kowalczyk, and covers a broad base of legal matters for the Volkswagen group in Poland. In the last few years the team has worked on modernising and creating new efficiency measures for the organisation of the legal department, including the implementation of a legal management system. This provides tools to easily manage clients, matters, financial reporting, cases and documents, and introduces several key technologies and streamlines processes to ensure maximum efficiency without compromising on quality through the assignment of tasks, careful prioritisation and the elimination of superfluous actions. Additionally, there has been internal restructuring in the form of a clear knowledge-based division of responsibilities among team members that is the result of a series of workshops. The team has also been involved in many of the group’s most important transactions and deals including the purchase of real estate which enabled further development of factories, paving the way for a new project that is bringing manufacturing of a new generation of vehicles to Poland. The team has also been central to a major milestone in the development of electro mobility, overseeing the construction of a new production plant which includes, amongst other tasks, building contracts, contracts with service providers, building permits, environmental impact reports and zoning permits. The team has also been involved in the legal aspects of re-zoning and administrative changes which impact both Volkswagen and the neighbourhood around the plant, through the transfer of ownership of the street from the City of Poznań to Volkswagen, and a high-value loan agreement with a consortium for the financing of the company’s investments. The latter was the result of large-scale cooperation between the legal department, treasury department and multiple banks. Dorota Stelmach, the team’s longest serving member, is described by Kowalczyk as ‘a treasure trove of valuable knowledge not only in law, but also about the history of company and its comings and goings’ and as being instrumental in numerous large-scale projects. In the wake of the new EU data protection legislation, Kowalczyk identified that team member Aleksandra Płowiec has ‘taken on the mammoth task of implementing this new law across the corporation, and thereafter auditing it, to make sure every organisational unit of the company is in compliance with the new regulations. This change in responsibilities automatically influenced the other team members’ responsibilities triggering the need for a revision of tasks and processes’. Similarly, Jacek Ostrykiewicz was identified as an ‘expert in risk assessment and construction law, who practically overnight took over the workload of an absent colleague, quickly and effectively adjusting to the new situation and making sure no projects were abandoned or suspended’.