When the system blocks the market: the case of Poland and food supplements

Poland updated its electronic platform for the notification of food products. On paper, the procedure existed. In practice, no company without a registered address in Poland could access the system.

The consequence was immediate: no access to the system meant no notification. No notification meant no legal commercialisation in the Polish market.

This was not a product issue. It was not a matter of composition, labelling or technical documentation. It was an access issue affecting an administrative procedure which, in practice, discriminated against operators established in other EU Member States.

The barrier

Since January 2026, several European companies had tried to notify their food supplements in Poland through the new electronic system. None of them were able to complete the procedure.

Attempts to resolve the situation through ordinary channels — helpdesk enquiries, technical communications — led nowhere. Access remained blocked.

The legal position

At that point, our legal department intervened. The analysis was not technical, but legal: can a national authority maintain a notification procedure that is inaccessible to European operators seeking to comply with their regulatory obligations?

Under EU law, the answer is no.

Our position was based on:

• Regulation (EU) 2019/515 on the mutual recognition of goods, which ensures that products lawfully marketed in one Member State cannot be unjustifiably blocked in another.
• The principle of free movement of goods (Article 34 TFEU) and the prohibition of measures having equivalent effect to quantitative restrictions.
• The principle of non-discrimination on the grounds of establishment, which prevents a national procedure from operating, in practice, more favourably for domestic operators than for operators from other Member States.

We formalised the complaint before the Główny Inspektorat Sanitarny (Poland’s Chief Sanitary Inspectorate) and before Poland’s Regulatory Affairs Department, the European Commission’s mechanism for resolving barriers to the internal market, on the grounds that the blockage constituted an unjustified barrier within the internal market.

The result

The Polish sanitary authority acknowledged the problem. The system was corrected to allow foreign companies to access the e-Sanepid platform using a qualified electronic signature (kwalifikowany podpis elektroniczny), the route enabled for operators not established in Poland.

The Inspectorate confirmed this in writing in an official letter signed by its director, Ilona Skwierzyńska, dated 23 April 2026.

From that moment onwards, the affected companies were able to access the procedure, notify their products and move forward with their commercialisation in the Polish market.

What this case proves

Food supplement regulation in Europe is not a uniform formality. Each Member State has its own procedures, platforms and enforcement criteria. And sometimes those procedures create barriers — not necessarily through bad faith, but because national systems are not always designed with foreign operators in mind.

When that happens, there are two options: accept the barrier as a fact or challenge it on the basis of European law.

At LegaleGo, we do not simply process notifications. We analyse the regulatory criteria, identify administrative barriers and defend our clients’ position when market access is blocked.

Because entering a European market is not only about ensuring the product complies. It is also about being able to operate under the same conditions as local operators. And when necessary, that must be defended before the competent authority.