With the development of online marketplaces, combating illegal and unsafe products reaching EU consumers is not easy. In recent years, online platforms such as Temu, which offer heavily discounted goods that often directly ship from China, have become popular with consumers.
Temu first came under the 'spotlight' when BEUC- The European Consumer Organisation and national consumer protection organisations initiated an enforcement campaign against Temu (see our report here).
Then, in May 2024, the EU Commission designated Temu as a Very Large Online Platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which conferred obligations on Temu to assess and mitigate any systemic risks stemming from its services.
Following this, in October 2024, the Commission opened formal proceedings to assess whether Temu may have breached the DSA in areas linked to the sale of illegal products, the potentially addictive design of the service, the systems used to recommend purchases to users, as well as data access for researchers. In July 2025, the Commission published preliminary findings that Temu was indeed in breach of the obligation under the DSA to properly assess the risks of illegal products being disseminated on its marketplace, and continues investigation in the other identified areas of concern.
Testing by consumer organisations has revealed that many parcels from Temu and similar online platforms contain products that are not compliant with EU consumer law and are even potentially harmful to consumers. These include, for example, clothing that contains banned chemicals, phone chargers that can explode, and balloons for children that contain illegal chemicals.
In an interesting and informative interview for Deutsche Welle, Augustin Reyna, Director General of BEUC, explains these developments (see here).
