• President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny checks the practices of Eurocash company towards suppliers of agricultural and food products.
• The allegations concern unfounded collection of additional fees.

The main business of Eurocash is wholesale and retail sale of food products and articles of everyday use. An entrepreneur, also through subsidiaries, is the owner of the largest chain of wholesalers in Poland and organiser of numerous chain stores, including: ABC, Delikatesy Centrum, Lewiatan, Gama, Groszek and Euro Sklep.

The President of UOKiK raised objections to agreements concluded with suppliers of products to these stores. They are obliged to pay a number of additional fees for services which, according to the agreement, should be provided by Eurocash.

“Despite our request, Eurocash failed to present any settlements and reports concerning the delivery of a number of services for which it received money. Moreover, some of them may not be performed at all. This applies, for example, to the organisation of training for stores by Eurocash,” says President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny.

In other questioned cases, even if the service specified in the agreement has been delivered, Eurocash failed to provide the suppliers with any information on its costs and results. This means that the company's contractors do not know whether the services they pay for are provided reliably and how much they actually cost. An example are fees for educating franchisees about products from the supplier's offer.

In addition, some of the paid activities would have been carried out by Eurocash anyway, due to the economic interest of this entrepreneur. Such is the case, inter alia, with exercising supervision over orders by stores belonging to a given retail chain.

“One of the main objectives of the Act on counteracting the unfair use of contractual advantage is to combat shelf fees, i.e. unjustified fees collected from suppliers by retail chains. We strongly believe that this is the case with Eurocash. Numerous services can only be provided seemingly for the benefit of suppliers, while their actual purpose is to reduce the remuneration due to contractors. This is an unacceptable practice, therefore I have initiated proceedings against the company. For the unfair use of contractual advantage, it may be fined by up to 3% of the annual turnover,” says President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny.

Entrepreneur, farmer, if you operate in the agri-food industry and your major contractor abuses its competitive advantage by imposing unfavorable conditions of cooperation – report it to the UOKiK. We have launched a special form to assist you in reporting irregularities. You can fill it out here: 
https://ankieta.uokik.gov.pl/formularz-zgloszenie-przewaga/.

Additional information for the media:

UOKiK Press Office
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E-mail: biuroprasowe@uokik.gov.pl
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