EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

Say what you may of Temu, and I do think more vetting of certain goods is a good idea, but they fill a very real need. In the part of Europe where I live, the choice is only between intermediaries for the same products coming from China. The local intermediaries sell a very limited picking at staggering margins. And when it comes to certain things, like electronic components, the choice is between importing (old) American stock with a German company as the intermediary, and that's $$$$ and many weeks of shipping, or using Temu or Aliexpress.

There's something unpleasantly snobbish with the way business is done here, a spirit of "if you have to ask the price, our business is not for you". For example, in Instagram, "Local offerings" pop up all the time in the feed. The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed. The ones that show actual prices tend to be shell companies with no employees, no doubt a thin wrapper around an importer from Asia.

Does Amazon or eBay get the same fine? Haha it’s the same people on all of these sites …. Just some dropshipping ?

Also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48307237

Big corp penny slap on the fingers. I dont this amount will change behaviour or incentive to make larger profit.

I am very pro free market, but Temu with data harvesting and selling illegal projects should be banned together with tiktok...

It seems like quite a light punishment for selling such dangerous products that could literally kill people. The dodgy e-bike batteries have already been linked to several fires.

bigclivedotcom takes apart some of the Temu stuff on YouTube and some of the electronics is atrocious.

Temu also should be fined for predatory marketing. Not sure if laws exist, but dark patterns are everywhere.

I try to a avoid Temu, but they have some good traits, too, like quick and convinient shipping.

Isn't there some kind of law to disallow imports without a CE / RoHS / etc label? Why allow it to enter the EU, and then fine the seller afterwards?

Why there is a difference between selling and allowing to sell? If the product is sold in your site, you must be responsible of it.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48307237

This is something like an individual being fined $200?

Seems fine

I mean that was the whole point of Temu... buy shit dirt cheap because over-regulation harms the consumer.

This has been going on for a year now.

The EU began enforcing a small parcel tax directly against Temu last May [0] and France has been strongly lobbying against Shein and Temu [1]. The EU has also made Chinese overproduction a critical topic of discussion for EU-China relations [2][3], and barring Temu and Shein is backed by both unions and industrial groups within Europe [4].

All of this is linking to the EU's strategy of playing hardball against Chinese support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine [5][6], as well as the Chinese perception that the EU is a has-been [7] as well as active info-war against a European state [8].

[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/102e18d7-d06b-4405-a347-97bb3c373...

[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/b1fdbad1-2793-4975-a10b-74bb928d3...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/eu-law...

[3] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20260326IP...

[4] - https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2025/09/15/les-indus...

[5] - https://www.bruegel.org/podcast/how-war-ukraine-reshaping-eu...

[6] - https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2025-01-...

[7] - https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/57/f8/c21257a743416/page.ht...

[8] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...

[dead]

[flagged]

[flagged]