Poland Puts Shrinkflation Under the Microscope After EU Court Ruling

Key Takeaways

• Poland Opens Shrinkflation Inquiries: UOKiK has launched preliminary investigations involving Danone, Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever over how reductions in product quantity are communicated to consumers.
• Accurate Weight Labels May Not Be Enough: The regulator is examining whether unchanged packaging, size or graphic design can mislead consumers even when the reduced weight or volume is correctly stated.
• CJEU Ruling Expands the Regulatory Question: An April 2026 judgment confirmed that compliance with food-labeling requirements does not prevent shrinkflation practices from being assessed under EU unfair commercial practices rules.
• No Violations Have Been Established: The investigations are preliminary. UOKiK has not determined that any of the four companies broke the law and will decide whether formal objections or further action are warranted.
• Shrinkflation Is Drawing Wider European Scrutiny: France, Hungary and Austria have introduced or are implementing measures addressing disclosure of product reductions, while courts in Austria and Germany have considered the practice.

Deep Dive

Poland’s competition and consumer protection authority is examining whether some of the world’s largest consumer-goods manufacturers are doing enough to tell shoppers when that happens. The President of UOKiK has opened preliminary investigations involving Danone, Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever, focusing on products whose weight, volume or quantity has been reduced while the packaging around them may give little indication that anything is different.

It is the old problem of shrinkflation, now arriving before regulators with a somewhat sharper legal edge. Manufacturers are already required to state how much product a package contains. A chocolate bar reduced from 100 grams to 90 grams must say 90 grams. What UOKiK wants to know is whether that literal accuracy can coexist with a broader deception: the same-looking wrapper, the same-sized box, perhaps the same price, and a customer who has bought the product often enough to stop checking the small print.

The regulator said it will examine whether reductions are communicated clearly and whether the appearance, dimensions or graphic design of packaging can leave consumers with the impression that the amount inside has not changed.

“A reduction in the quantity or weight of a product must be communicated fairly,” UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny said in announcing the investigations. When the packaging gives no obvious indication of a change, he said, consumers may simply fail to notice it.

The arithmetic is less subtle. Reduce the amount without reducing the price and the unit price rises. A customer can spend precisely what they spent before and still walk away having paid more for each gram, milliliter or biscuit. For UOKiK, that creates a problem larger than the missing 10 grams of chocolate. The authority argues that poorly communicated reductions can make meaningful price comparisons harder and erode trust between companies and their customers.

The four companies have not been found to have violated the law. These are preliminary investigations, and UOKiK is examining their practices to determine whether further action is warranted. If it concludes that the way products are presented, or the way reductions are communicated, misleads consumers, the authority may formally raise objections.

The scrutiny is not entirely new. UOKiK commissioned research on downsizing in 2023 and found that consumers most frequently associated the practice with food, particularly confectionery and dairy products. What has changed since then is the law surrounding the question of what counts as adequate disclosure.

When an Accurate Label May Not Be Enough

An April judgment from the Court of Justice of the European Union gave regulators a clearer route into the problem. In Case C-301/25, the court confirmed that compliance with rules governing food information does not necessarily prevent a commercial practice from being examined separately under EU rules on unfair business-to-consumer practices.

For shrinkflation, that matters. A manufacturer can correctly print the new weight on a package. That satisfies one question. It does not automatically settle another: whether the product, taken as it is actually presented to someone standing in a store, creates a misleading impression about what that person is buying.

UOKiK has made the distinction central to its investigation. The authority intends to look beyond the number printed on the label and consider how reductions are communicated as a whole. If the packaging looks sufficiently unchanged that a regular buyer could reasonably miss the reduction, the fact that the correct weight appears somewhere on it may not end the matter.

“Downsizing is not a new phenomenon,” Chróstny said. “What is new, however, is the CJEU judgement.”

His point is an important one for companies selling consumer products across Europe. The question is shifting from whether the information exists to whether the consumer can reasonably be expected to understand that something material has changed.

There is a peculiar difficulty here because familiarity does some of the work that packaging is designed to make it do. People do not approach every purchase as though encountering an object for the first time. They recognize the purple wrapper or the shape of the bottle. They know where it sits on the shelf. They have bought it before. A package can therefore disclose a new quantity accurately while preserving almost everything that tells a habitual buyer, without words, that this is the same thing they bought last week.

The CJEU judgment gives consumer authorities greater room to examine that gap between what a package technically says and what its presentation communicates.

Poland is not alone in doing so. France, Hungary and Austria have introduced or are implementing measures addressing the disclosure of reductions in product quantities, while courts in Austria and Germany have also considered shrinkflation-related cases.

That leaves the investigations into Danone, Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever at an early but consequential stage. UOKiK has not concluded that any of the companies misled consumers, and its preliminary inquiries may or may not produce formal proceedings. But the standard now being tested is a more demanding one than whether the new number of grams was printed correctly. It asks companies to account for how people actually shop: quickly, repeatedly and with a great deal of trust placed in recognition.

For manufacturers, that could make the design choices surrounding a downsized product part of the compliance question itself. A legally accurate label may tell consumers what is in the package. European regulators are increasingly interested in whether the rest of the package tells them something else.

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