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The low-cost Chinese e-commerce platform Temu was fined 200 million euros ($232 million) by the European Union on Thursday for failing to spot and curb the sale of illegal products.<\/p>\n
The European Commission, the bloc\u2019s executive arm, said Temu had violated the European Union\u2019s Digital Services Act, the bloc\u2019s wide-ranging law that polices online practices. Temu is required to submit a plan to address the breaches by Aug. 28. It could also appeal.<\/p>\n
The commission opened its investigation into Temu in 2024, one year after the company first expanded into Europe, amid what it called<\/a> \u201ca steady surge\u201d in products sold online that it said were \u201cunsafe, counterfeit or noncompliant.\u201d The goods were potentially harmful to consumers, the environment and \u201cfair competition,\u201d officials said.<\/p>\n The European Union said on Thursday that Temu had been subject to a mystery shopping exercise as part of the investigation. In that test, \u201ca very high percentage\u201d of chargers failed basic safety tests and many baby toys \u201cposed safety risks.\u201d The toys contained chemicals that were above legal limits or posed suffocation hazards, the statement noted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The fine was the second against a company for violating the Digital Services Act. The commission previously fined X<\/a> the equivalent of $139 million over transparency issues under the act. Technology firms have been hit with larger fines<\/a> under other E.U. rules.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue to engage with regulators in good faith, while reviewing the decision carefully and considering all available options,\u201d a Temu spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n Temu is owned by the Chinese tech giant PDD Holdings<\/a> and serves millions of shoppers outside China, including in the European Union\u2019s large market of 450 million consumers. It sells clothing, beauty products, home goods and other items.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s assessment of its risks \u201cleaves regulators, users and the public in the dark about the true scale of potential harm posed by illegal products sold on Temu,\u201d Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission official responsible for technology, said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cNow it is time for Temu to comply with the law,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n European officials have been grappling with how to control the flow of goods from China and protect local companies struggling to compete with China\u2019s manufacturing dominance \u2014 an issue that spans cheap everyday goods, electronics, automobiles and more. The European Commission has also opened<\/a> investigations into Shein and AliExpress, two of Temu\u2019s Chinese competitors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n