GDANSK, Poland, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Polish e-commerce platform Erli has sued larger rival Allegro, accusing it of abusing its dominant position by effectively forcing sellers to raise their prices outside its platform, Erli said on Monday in a statement.
Allegro, Poland's largest e-commerce company, denied the claims in a statement sent to Reuters, saying the lawsuit concerned its voluntary benefit programs which, for example, subsidise price cuts for sellers on its platform.
"We strongly disagree with Erli's position. We do not impose any specific pricing policy on our partners. Each of our partners is free to set prices in any sales channel," Allegro spokesperson Marcin Gruszka said.
Gruszka added that Allegro had itself sued Erli in June, accusing it of unlawfully copying product listings, including photos and descriptions, from its platform.
"In this case, the court granted us an injunction ... prohibiting Erli from using these practices and ordered Erli to take specific actions," Gruszka said.
"The court also imposed financial penalties for non-compliance ... however, despite this, Erli has not yet complied with this provision," he added.
The dispute centres around Allegro's promotional programs, which Erli said were used to punish sellers for offering lower prices on other websites by withdrawing benefits such as co-financed discounts or external advertising.
"We are not demanding financial compensation. Our main goal is to end practices that we consider unfair," Erli CEO Adam Ciesielczyk said in a statement sent to Reuters, adding he wants sellers to operate independently.
Allegro is the dominant player in Poland's e-commerce market, which reported a gross merchandise value of 49.65 billion zlotys ($12.1 billion) for the first nine months of 2025, compared with 1.29 billion zlotys for Erli in the same period.
(Additional reporting by Rafal Nowak, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Chris Reese)
