There were more than 950 decisions in the scope of competition and consumer protection, nearly PLN 430 million in penalties were imposed. Nearly 20,000 inspections to check the quality and safety of toys, clothes, and everyday products, according to a summary of the activities of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) in 2022.

“Last year was a time of hard work for consumers and honest entrepreneurs, marked by post-pandemic difficulties, but above all by the war in Ukraine. We faced challenges not only by monitoring the market and countering unfair practices, but also by supporting the government in developing and notifying aid programmes”, said UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny.

Speaking about the main areas of his office’s activity, the president of UOKiK pointed to “the revolution in the labelling of commercial content on the Internet, as well as the tidying up of content marketing on news portals”. 

“We questioned the practices of e-commerce entrepreneurs who, unfortunately, increasingly use knowledge of consumer behaviour to unfairly influence purchasing decisions, including so-called dark patterns. The two important decisions against Allegro issued at the end of the year, which show that we think about both competition and consumer protection under the same roof, naturally fit into this theme,” said Tomasz Chróstny.

The highest penalty for competition-restricting practices in 2022 was imposed on Allegro and amounted to more than PLN 206 million. The entrepreneur illegally exploited its market position by favouring its own online shop at the expense of competing sellers on the allegro.pl platform.

The second-best penalty concerned the Karcher company and amounted to PLN 26 million. The company had been setting minimum and rigid retail prices for Karcher-branded cleaning equipment and systems since the late 1990s in agreement with its distributors. 

Adrian Andrzejewski