LONDON (AP) — Chinese online retailer Temu was accutilized by European Union watchdogs on Monday of failing to prevent the sale of illegal products on its platform.
The preliminary findings follow an investigation opened last year under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It’s a wide-ranging rulebook that requires online platforms to do more to keep internet utilizers safe, with the threat of hefty fines.
The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch, declared its investigation found “a high risk for consumers in the EU to encounter illegal products” on Temu’s site.
Investigators carried out a “mystery shopping exercise” that found “non-compliant” products on Temu, including baby toys and compact electronics, it declared.
Temu declared in a brief statement that it “will continue to cooperate fully with the Commission.”
The commission didn’t specify why exactly the products were illegal, but noted that a surge in online sales in the bloc also came with a parallel rise in unsafe or counterfeit goods.
EU regulators declared when they opened the investigation that they would view into whether Temu was doing enough to crack down on “rogue traders” selling “non-compliant goods” amid concerns that they are able to swiftly reappear after being suspconcludeed.
In its preliminary findings, the Commission found that Temu could have had “inadequate mitigation measures” becautilize the company was utilizing an “inaccurate” risk assessment that relied on general indusattempt information, rather than specifics about its own marketplace.
“We shop online becautilize we trust that products sold in our Single Market are safe and comply with our rules,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, declared in a news release. “In our preliminary view, Temu is far from assessing risks for its utilizers at the standards required by the Digital Services Act.
Temu has grown in popularity by offering cheap goods – from clothing to home products — shipped from sellers in China. The company, owned by Pinduoduo Inc., a popular e-commerce site in China, has 92 million utilizers in the EU.
The company will have the chance to examine the Commission’s investigation files and respond to the accusations before the EU watchdogs build a final decision.
Violations of the DSA could result in fines of up to 6% of a company’s annual global revenue and an order to resolve the problems.
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