A review of UOKiK decisions over recent years shows that distribution agreements concerning pricing policy, namely resale prices, still account for a relatively large number of cases. UOKiK’s Oltens (2026), Jura (2025), KIA (2024), Iveco (2024) and Fellowes (2021) decisions, and the European Commission’s Chloé, Gucci and Loewe decision (2025), show how commercial calculations often push businesses towards solutions infringing competition law.
Many factors may make a producer want to influence prices charged by distributors operating on a resale model: standardising pricing across a network, maintaining a price signalling high quality, reducing intra-network price competition to leave distributors funds for advertising, ensuring prices match the producer’s own channel, and so on. These considerations sometimes coexist with ignorance of the competition law limits on distribution network pricing.
Permitted and prohibited resale price agreements
At first sight, the boundaries are clear in both Polish and EU law. Agreements directly or indirectly imposing minimum or fixed resale prices on distributors, commonly called resale price maintenance or RPM, are prohibited. Maximum or recommended prices are generally permitted, although the assessment may change where the supplier’s share of the selling market or distributor’s share of the purchasing market exceeds 30%.
Businesses, particularly larger ones with legal and compliance departments, usually know that expressly fixing minimum or fixed resale prices is unlawful. In practice, the same objective is often pursued indirectly. It still infringes competition law, which assesses an agreement in its full commercial context. The Commission’s 2022 Guidelines provide several examples:
- fixing a minimum or fixed margin, or a maximum customer discount relative to a supplier-specified price;
This is economically equivalent to a minimum price. It occurred in KIA (2024), attracting very high UOKiK fines not only for the supplier, the KIA car importer, and distributors, but also managers.
- making distributor discounts or reimbursement of promotional costs conditional on observing a particular resale price level;
UOKiK found this policy in Fellowes (2021): distributors not applying the supplier’s minimum prices lost access to promotional purchase prices and marketing support.
- imposing minimum advertised prices, prohibiting advertising below a supplier-specified level;
Superficially, this leaves actual resale prices free. The Commission explicitly states, however, that restricting communication of discounts removes a key element of price competition between distributors and treats these agreements like RPM. UOKiK is highly likely to take an analogous approach.
- pressure through threats, warnings, penalties, threatened termination or suspended deliveries for failing to apply the supplier’s minimum or fixed prices.
Suppliers often set an ostensibly permissible recommended price and then apply a range of pressure to secure compliance. In Oltens (2026), the supplier monitored distributor prices and threatened those not following recommendations with suspended supplies or blocked purchasing platform access.
The key is therefore the entire supplier–distributor relationship, especially incentives and penalties, rather than the agreement’s wording alone. Only in that context can one determine whether the distributor genuinely remains free to set sale prices, organise promotions and grant discounts.
Limited scope for a defence
In theory, RPM agreements can also rely on procompetitive effects if the conditions in Polish or EU law are met: Article 8(1) of the Competition and Consumer Protection Act and Article 101(3) TFEU. The Commission’s 2022 Guidelines even identify typical situations potentially supporting such effects in specific circumstances demonstrated by the undertaking:
- launching a new product, where RPM incentivises distributors to support the producer’s promotional intention;
- temporary fixed resale prices during a coordinated promotional campaign across a uniformly organised network, usually two to six weeks;
- preventing distributors from free-riding on others’ pre-sale services, where customers use specialist advice from one distributor then buy more cheaply from another that does not invest in those services.
In practice, authorities very rarely accept such arguments. RPM is a hardcore restriction of distributors’ freedom and can produce procompetitive effects and qualify for exemption only exceptionally, in very particular circumstances.
For example, the Commission expressly rejected arguments based on protecting luxury brand image in Chloé, Gucci and Loewe (2025), despite their commercial rationale.
It is therefore prudent to assume that proving procompetitive effects and defending RPM in UOKiK or Commission proceedings will probably not be possible. UOKiK fines on parties to RPM arrangements are rising steadily. Sometimes only suppliers are fined where they coerced distributors, and UOKiK is increasingly also fining managers responsible.
How to reduce the risk of infringing the RPM prohibition
Since the full relationship and actual practices determine infringement, a distribution agreement template free of prohibited clauses is insufficient. Sales departments also need appropriate training, including communication with distributors, and their practices must be monitored. Otherwise, conduct may infringe the RPM prohibition despite exemplary documentation.
