The Polish competition regulator UOKiK has slapped Jerónimo Martins Polska with a €121 million fine for orchestrating a seven-year collusion that restricted driver mobility — a case that now places Portugal's largest retail group at the center of a European crackdown on labour market manipulation.
Why This Matters
• The fine: Jerónimo Martins Polska must pay 525 million zlotys (€121 million) — roughly half of the group's reported 2025 first-half net profit.
• The allegation: The Biedronka supermarket chain coordinated with 29 transport companies to prevent drivers from switching employers between June 2017 and February 2024.
• European backing: The European Commission reviewed the case and confirmed the practices violated EU competition rules.
• Jerónimo Martins' response: The Portuguese retail giant rejects all allegations and vows to challenge the decision in Polish courts.
How the Scheme Operated
The mechanism was straightforward but devastatingly effective for workers caught in its net. Drivers employed by transport companies serving Biedronka's distribution centers discovered their career mobility was deliberately blocked — not by their skills or performance, but by a backroom agreement brokered by their client's largest customer.
Under this arrangement, a driver wanting to leave one transport company for another operating in the same distribution center needed explicit permission from their current employer. Without it, they faced a "tolerance period" — effectively a punishment window lasting several months — during which they were barred from entering the distribution center to work for any other participant in the scheme.
For a driver earning based on deliveries completed, being locked out of the distribution center for months wasn't just inconvenient — it meant losing their livelihood. The system made switching employers functionally impossible, removing any leverage workers might have had to demand better pay or conditions.
The UOKiK investigation found that Jerónimo Martins Polska acted as the coordinator, ensuring the 29 transport companies honored their mutual non-compete pledge. This wasn't a loose understanding; it was an organized system that the regulator says operated continuously for nearly seven years before inspectors moved in February 2024.
The Real Cost for Workers
Poland's trucking sector employs tens of thousands of drivers, and the industry has been grappling with a worsening labour shortage. According to EU figures, more than 110,000 truck driver positions remained unfilled across the bloc in 2024, with projections suggesting that gap could nearly double by 2028.
In a functioning market, that kind of scarcity should push wages upward as employers compete for talent. Current salary data shows a qualified Polish truck driver can earn between 8,500 and 15,000 zlotys monthly (roughly €2,000 to €3,500), with international routes commanding premiums.
But the UOKiK concluded that by suppressing competition for drivers, the agreement likely prevented natural wage growth. When workers cannot vote with their feet, employers hold all the negotiating power. As the regulator's president, Tomasz Chróstny, put it: "Workers have the right to seek better wages and working conditions. A conspiracy that denies them this right violates the fundamental principles of fair competition."
The timing matters too. The scheme allegedly operated during a period of significant inflation pressure across Europe. Workers locked into stagnant wages while consumer prices surged faced a double squeeze on their purchasing power.
A Growing European Enforcement Trend
Jerónimo Martins isn't the first major European company to face this type of scrutiny — and won't be the last. Competition authorities across the EU have been intensifying their focus on so-called "no-poach agreements" in labour markets.
Just last year, the European Commission issued its first-ever fine for such violations, hitting German-based Delivery Hero and Spain's Glovo with a combined €329 million penalty for agreeing not to hire each other's workers in the food delivery sector.
France has been particularly aggressive. In June 2025, the French Competition Authority fined engineering consultancies Alten, Expleo, and Bertrandt €29.5 million for "gentlemen's agreements" that blocked employee poaching. Earlier cases targeted logistics giants DHL and TNT for similar wage-suppression schemes.
Portugal's own Competition Authority (AdC) has joined the enforcement wave, fining the IT consultancy Inetum €3.1 million in February 2025 for anticompetitive hiring practices — part of a broader case that has already extracted €4.1 million from other companies in the same sector.
What emerges is a clear message: EU regulators now treat worker-suppression collusion with the same seriousness traditionally reserved for price-fixing cartels. The Jerónimo Martins case is simply the latest — and one of the largest — dominoes to fall.
What This Means for Investors and Residents
For Portuguese investors holding Jerónimo Martins shares, the immediate question is financial. The €121 million fine represents a serious but survivable hit for a group that reported consolidated sales of €30.6 billion in 2024. However, litigation uncertainty could weigh on the stock until courts render a final verdict — a process that could take years in the Polish judicial system.
More broadly, the case signals that Portugal's corporate giants operating abroad face heightened compliance risks. The European Commission's endorsement of the Polish regulator's findings removes any hope that this might be treated as a local regulatory overreach. Brussels has made clear it considers these practices a priority target.
For Portugal-based businesses — whether operating domestically or across the EU — the enforcement trend demands a compliance audit. Do current supplier contracts or partnership agreements contain informal understandings about hiring? Internal codes of conduct are no longer sufficient if day-to-day business practices contradict them.
Jerónimo Martins insists its Code of Conduct explicitly forbids exactly the behavior alleged by UOKiK. The company says it is "firmly convinced" it engaged in no illegal activity and will contest the decision in court. It also criticized the regulator for announcing the fine publicly before formally notifying the company — a procedural complaint that may form part of its legal defense.
The Polish regulator's decision is appealable, and Jerónimo Martins has deep experience navigating Eastern European markets. But the reputational dimension is harder to litigate. Biedronka employs thousands directly and indirectly across Poland, and the suggestion that parent company policies contributed to wage suppression for years may fuel consumer backlash in its largest foreign market.
The Bottom Line
This case strips away any remaining ambiguity about how European authorities view labour market collusion. The Portuguese retail empire built on razor-thin margins in Polish grocery retail now faces one of the largest competition fines in its history — not for manipulating product prices, but for allegedly manipulating workers.
The courts will decide whether the evidence supports UOKiK's claims. But the enforcement signal has already been sent: when companies conspire to trap workers, the price tag can run into nine figures. For Portugal's multinational corporate sector, that's a lesson worth learning before the next knock on the door.
