• The European Parliament voted for solutions on dual quality of products.
• This means better consumer protection and reasonable law for Polish enterprises.

The provision on dual quality will be implemented at national level in the Act on Combating Unfair Commercial Practices, which is an implementation of the EU Directive 2005/29/EC. Member States have two years to introduce new legislation. From now on, unjustified differentiation of products due to the country of destination will constitute an unfair market practice.

Enterprises are already not allowed to adopt unfair market practices. However, thanks to new solutions, the dual quality practice has been explicitly indicated in the directive, which will help consumers and consumer organizations pursue claims. The solution put forward in the new directive is reasonable, because it balances the interests of both consumers and enterprises, explains Marek Niechciał, President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK).

If an enterprise makes a false impression that products sold under the same brand in different EU member states are identical, while in reality they differ in quality and ingredients, President of UOKiK will be able to intervene just like in the case of other unfair market practices. Not every difference will imply dual quality. The Office will analyse each case depending on specific circumstances. Pursuant to the Act on Competition and Consumer Protection, UOKiK will be able to impose a fine of up to 10% of trade at the most.

The first benchmark tests

In 2017 and 2018, the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection compared the quality of food products intended for Polish and Western European markets. We checked the products in two ways. The Trade Inspection and our accredited laboratories assisted us in this procedure. First benchmark tests: at the end of 2017, we bought food items in Poland and their counterparts in Germany. Second benchmark tests: in the second quarter of 2018, we selected pairs of food products for tests. They were offered for sale under the same brand, but one group of products had original labels in Polish (which means products were designed for Polish market), while the other – only in a foreign language (which proves they were to be sold in other Western European countries). In total, we checked 101 product pairs; significant differences were found in 15 of them. It was discovered, for example, that different amounts of some product were offered in packages of the same size or different recipes were used that caused different taste and smell of product, there were also differences in label readability. Despite differences, it was not always possible to determine which product, i.e. Polish or western, was better from the point of view of consumers. We provided our findings to the Joint Research Centre (the JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service. In October 2018, the Centre launched an EU-wide comparative testing campaigns to assess branded food products offered on several markets in the EU, in which we participated. We are waiting for a summary of results of analyses that had been carried out.

Additional information for the media:

UOKiK Press Office
Pl. Powstańców Warszawy 1, 00-950 Warszawa, Poland
Phone +48 695 902 088, +48 22 55 60 314
E-mail: [SCODE]Yml1cm9wcmFzb3dlQHVva2lrLmdvdi5wbA==[ECODE]
Twitter: @UOKiKgovPL