EU regulators have hit Chinese-owned online retailer Temu with a €200 million penalty, accusing the fast-growing marketplace of letting illegal and unsafe goods reach consumers — from hazardous baby toys to faulty device chargers.
The European Commission said Temu “failed to diligently identify, analyse, and assess the systemic risks of illegal products being offered on its platform and the resulting harm to consumers in the European Union,” according to a statement announcing the decision.
The case was brought under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping rulebook aimed at tightening oversight of major tech platforms. Under the legislation, companies designated as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) — a category that includes Temu — must “diligently assess systemic risks linked to their services and adopt corresponding mitigation measures”.
As part of the commission’s investigation, officials carried out mystery shopping exercises to test what consumers might actually receive when ordering online. Those checks found a high percentage of baby toys contained chemicals or presented suffocation hazards, the commission said.
Chargers sold through the platform also failed basic safety tests, it added.
The commission said the €200m fine was “calculated taking into account the nature of the infringement, its gravity in terms of affected EU users, and its duration”.
It also described the company’s failure to properly conduct risk assessments as a particularly “serious infringement of the DSA”.
Temu pushed back on the scale of the sanction. A company spokesperson said Temu respects “the objectives of the Digital Services Act” but considers the fine to be “disproportionate”.
“The decision relates to our first DSA assessment in 2024 and does not reflect the current state of our systems,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that Temu worked constructively with the commission during the proceedings and has since taken additional measures to bolster risk assessment, platform governance and user protection.
Temu is “reviewing the decision carefully and considering all available options”.
