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

130 points by jjp

by dsign

3 subcomments

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.

by pickleballcourt

0 subcomment

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

by 0cf8612b2e1e

0 subcomment

  … 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

by maxglute

0 subcomment

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.

by j0ba

0 subcomment

EU is a fine organization

by esnard

0 subcomment

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

by Jerry2

1 subcomments

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.

by happyPersonR

1 subcomments

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

by kvgr

3 subcomments

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

by acd

3 subcomments

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

by schnitzelstoat

1 subcomments

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.

by ChrisArchitect

0 subcomment

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

by manoDev

6 subcomments

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?

by jordiburgos

4 subcomments

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.

by theragra

0 subcomment

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.

0 subcomment

by alephnerd

0 subcomment

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...

by econ

0 subcomment

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

by exabrial

0 subcomment

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

by Bolin-Weng_666

0 subcomment

[flagged]

by petarvasilev

0 subcomment

[dead]

by pseudopolous

2 subcomments

[flagged]