Poland: Announced investigation into Allegro for abuse of dominance through self-preferencing

On 10 December 2019, the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) opened an investigation into the online shopping platform Allegro for allegedly abusing its dominant position through self-preferencing. Allegro is both an intermediary platform in e-commerce (allegro.pl), and also sells goods itself on its own online store, called Official Allegro Store (OSA). Allegro is alleged to use non-public information from the sales on its platform to adjust its accuracy algorithm and rank and display its own offers in a preferential matter in the search results on its page. Furthermore, Allegro is alleged to use features not available to its competitors, such as discount coupons and recommendation carousels, to further favour its own store.