Poland Treats Unchanged Packs as Shrinkflation Evidence

Poland’s consumer watchdog opened explanatory cases against four producers on 1 September 2026 over shrinkflation. UOKiK is asking whether Danone, Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever still sell a pack that looks the same after the fill got smaller.

The review covers food, cleaning products and personal care sold in Poland. No charges have been filed. The test is the familiar box, not a missing gram figure on the back.

Four Giants Face a Review, Not Charges

President Tomasz Chróstny opened explanatory proceedings, a fact-finding step that sits before any formal case. The office will check how the four tell shoppers when quantity or weight falls, above all when the pack itself does not change. If the way a product is shown could lead people to think the size is the same, he may bring charges.

Producers already have to print the new mass, volume or piece count. UOKiK’s point is that a regular buy is easy to miss when the price and the artwork stay put. The four names are among the largest makers of food, detergents and personal care on the Polish market.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The step: Explanatory proceedings opened on 1 September 2026, with no charges yet.
• The firms: Danone, Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever, for food, cleaning and personal care sold in Poland.
• The test: Whether pack look, size or graphics suggest the product did not shrink.
• The law cited: The Court of Justice of the European Union held in April that a correct food-law weight mark does not block an unfair-practices review.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Named SKUs: UOKiK has not published a list of Polish products under review.
• Next step: Charges follow only if the office finds the presentation misleads shoppers.

Mondelez Polska said it is cooperating with the office and providing all necessary clarifications. Danone said pack-size changes are a normal part of building a range, and that weight or volume sits in a visible spot on the pack and in brand channels.

The Unchanged Pack Is the Evidence

Shrinkflation, which UOKiK also calls downsizing, is a smaller weight or volume at the old price, often in a box that still fills the same shelf slot. The commercial value of that move is the sameness. A shopper who grabs the purple bar or the yogurt pot she has bought for years does not stop to re-read a number she thinks she already knows.

That is why the unchanged pack is now the fact pattern. Chróstny said a cut in weight with no price cut means people pay more for the product, which makes price comparison harder and weakens trust. The office is not alleging that the new grams are missing from the label. It is asking whether the look of the pack still sells the old size.

The same gap shows up in German aisles, where 90 g bars still sit in wraps cut for a 100 g slab, and where a smaller fill is sometimes pitched as less waste. The cardboard, the lorry and the shelf slot do not shrink with the bar, so a tenth less chocolate is not a tenth less cost to put it on sale.

THE CUTS UOKIK USED AS EXAMPLES

• Chocolate: A bar that was 100 g is now 90 g, a tenth less fill in a pack that can look unchanged.
• Flour: A kilo bag is 900 g, again a tenth less product.
• Drinks: A bottle that used to be 1 L holds 800 ml, a fifth less liquid.
• Biscuits: A pack that held 20 pieces now holds 17, which is 15 percent fewer biscuits.

Those figures are illustrations in the 1 September notice, not a charge sheet against any named SKU. They describe the visual trick the office says it will test: old silhouette, new contents.

A Pasta Label Case Now Covers Chocolate

Downsizing is old. What UOKiK says is new is the 30 April ruling in Case C-301/25. That case was not about shrinking bars. It was a fight between Lidl Italia and Italy’s competition authority, AGCM, over durum-wheat pasta that played up Italian origin while the wheat was a mix labelled “EU and non-EU.” AGCM had fined Lidl Italia €1 million on 20 December 2019.

The First Chamber held that Article 3(4) of the EU unfair commercial practices directive does not stop a national authority from punishing a misleading practice just because the same conduct also sits under the food-information rule in Regulation 1169/2011. The two systems of protection, the court said, can work together.

UOKiK takes that holding and points it at the pantry. Even if a downsized pack carries a correct new weight, that would not block a review of whether the practice misleads under unfair-practices rules. The small print that used to end the argument is now only the start of it.

Downsizing is not a new phenomenon. What is new, however, is the CJEU judgement, which unequivocally confirmed that such practices may also be assessed from a consumer protection perspective. Undertakings should provide clear and easily understandable information about changes in product weight.

Tomasz Chróstny, President, UOKiK, 1 September 2026 statement

He said the office will check whether a weight cut is clearly told to shoppers, and whether the look, size or graphics of the pack give a false sense that nothing shrank.

66 Percent of Shoppers Already Saw the Shrink

The legal turn did not come out of nowhere. UOKiK commissioned a survey of 1,105 Polish adults with the Warsaw School of Economics and ARC Rynek i Opinia, with telephone interviews run from 26 October to 12 November 2023, plus four two-hour focus groups.

Chróstny said shoppers most often flagged downsizing in food, especially dairy and sweets, which matches the categories that dominate a weekly trolley. Bread is bought at least two or three times a week by 82 percent of those asked, dairy by 54 percent. A habit buy is the one you do not re-weigh.

THE 2023 POLISH SHOPPER SURVEY

Most people in the study do not treat a smaller yogurt as a health win. Acceptance is highest for sweets, chips and alcohol, and even there it is 17 percent or less. The political demand the office sat on for three years is blunt: put the change on the front, and send inspectors.

Europe Split the Duty Between Stores and Brands

Other EU states saw the same trick and hung the warning on the supermarket, not the factory. France has, since 1 July 2024, required food-heavy shops larger than 400 m² to post notices for the first two months a downsized pack is on sale, stating the old quantity, the new quantity and the rise in the unit price. A person can be fined up to €3,000 and a company up to €15,000. Then-finance minister Bruno Le Maire called shrinkflation a scam.

Hungary’s February 2024 decree put a similar two-month store notice on retailers, and the food-safety office built a public list of downsized packs. Those rules were folded into the trade and consumer-protection statutes on 20 July 2025. Austria’s Anti-Deceptive Packaging Act took effect on 1 April 2026 and runs to 30 June 2030. It covers stationary food and drugstore retailers with more than 400 m² of sales space or more than five branches, and it bites when a smaller fill pushes the unit price up by more than 3 percent, unless the maker already flags the change on the pack.

Germany has gone through the courts. In May 2026 the Bremen regional court (Az. 12 O 118/25) held that Milka bars cut from 100 g to 90 g, about 1 mm thinner, misled buyers because the wrap still sold the old expectation. The court said a clear notice should have run for at least four months after the cut. The judgment is not final. Mondelez said it would work on how it communicates. EU rules have allowed chocolate bars under 100 g since 2009, so the fight is the look, not the right to sell 90 g.

WHO MUST WARN IN EUROPE

Warsaw did not copy the shelf sticker. It opened files on the companies that design the packs. That choice puts Danone, Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever in a different spot from Carrefour or Biedronka, which in France or Hungary would have had to post the sign.

Danone’s Defense of the Smaller Pot

Danone, which employs more than 3,000 people in Poland across seven plants and says it adds 3.5 billion zloty a year to the domestic economy, told the Polish press agency that changes in pack size are a natural part of developing a range and matching shifting shopper needs. It said those changes sit inside a wider process that includes recipes, new flavours and refreshed packs, and that gram and volume figures are always in a visible place on the pack and in brand channels, so people can check before they buy.

That is the classic maker line: the number is on the pack, so the shopper was told. UOKiK’s 2023 fieldwork cuts against the idea that the number is enough. Even in dairy, the category where people are most likely to check weight, 31 percent do not. In a focus-group country that still buys cheese and yogurt several times a week, a correct 400 g on a pot that used to feel like 450 g is easy to skip.

Mondelez is already in a German courtroom over the same visual gap on Milka. Its Polish unit’s line in Warsaw is narrower: it is answering the office’s questions. Nestlé and Unilever sit in the same four-name caption and have not put a comparable public defense next to Danone’s.

What a Formal Case Could Cost

If UOKiK finds the presentation misleads, it can move from an explanatory file to charges for practices that harm the collective interests of consumers. On that path the president may impose a fine of up to 10 percent of the firm’s turnover in the financial year before the penalty, the same ceiling the office cites in other unfair-practices cases. No one has been fined in this review, and the ceiling is not a forecast.

THE PATH TO THE SEPTEMBER REVIEW

1. 26 October to 12 November 2023: UOKiK fields the 1,105-person survey on downsizing.
2. February 2024: Hungary requires store notices when a pre-packed fill shrinks.
3. 1 July 2024: French shops over 400 m² must post shrinkflation notices for two months.
4. 30 April 2026: The EU court holds that a correct food-law label does not block an unfair-practices case.
5. 1 April 2026: Austria’s pack-notice law takes effect for large retailers.
6. May 2026: Bremen finds the thinner Milka bar misleading; the ruling is not final.
7. 1 September 2026: UOKiK opens explanatory proceedings against the four makers.

The four can still walk away with a request to make the next weight cut louder on the front of the pack. They can also find that the box they kept the same, so the brand still owned the shelf, is the exhibit that opens a formal case. The grams on the back are no longer the end of the discussion.