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

esnard

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

schnitzelstoat

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.

kvgr

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

manoDev

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?

jordiburgos

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.

alephnerd

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 pushing back against the Chinese perception that the EU is a has-been [7] as well as conducting an 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...

exabrial

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

acd

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

econ

This is something like an individual being fined $200? Seems fine

ChrisArchitect

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

theragra

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.

dsign

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.

happyPersonR

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

Jerry2

The EU is only good at imposing massive fines and they like to regulate technologies they have not created and don't even host them. TEMO will more than likely just pass the cost of this onto EU consumers.

0cf8612b2e1e

… which found that a high percentage of chargers purchased through Temu failed basic electrical safety tests. It also found that a high proportion of baby toys posed safety risks, containing chemicals above legal limits or featuring small detachable parts that presented suffocation hazards… Boring. I can probably find the exact same on Amazon. From the headline, I was hoping the list of illegal products was going to be something like enriched plutonium, RPGs, Lawn Darts, etc

maxglute

How many dead babies or battery fires post Temu, seems like good opportunity to conduct a before/after study on cost:ratio of EU regulations.

j0ba

EU is a fine organization

pickleballcourt

I’m curious if its actually difficult or trivial for Temu to enforce

nickff

The EU's approach to imports from PRoC is the regulatory equivalent of trying to 'test your way to quality' (which Deming showed to be nearly impossible). Attempts to use regulatory fines and prosecutions to ensure compliance from PRoC products is a whack-a-mole exercise which will fail.

pacman1337

The past making quality clothing was difficult, cutting it right, sourcing the right patterns designs materials, stitching it took care etc. In our world making quality clothing should be easy with all the technology but what we see in bad quality that you wash a few times and it is trash. It is uglier designs than in the past etc. It makes no sense. It is like a conspiracy where people don't want to sell quality clothes at a fair price. Like all companies got together and decided we will sell crap clothes at cheap prices and good clothes at extortion prices. There is zero correlation with actual costs.