The Digital Services Act in action: combatting illegal and unsafe products

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). 

New action by BEUC: Tamig Temu

We all like a good deal! However, those of us who know (a bit more) about consumer rights and consumer law are aware that cheap goods and services often come at a high price, by infringing our consumer rights.

TEMU, the online marketplace that has gained popularity in the EU, has recently came under the spotlight. This month, BEUC, The European Consumer Organisation, has taken a significant step by initiating an enforcement campaign against TEMU, named 'Taming Temu'. The campaign is a response to TEMU's violation of its consumer protection obligations under the Digital Services Act. The identified breaches include:

•   failing to provide sufficient traceability of the traders that sell on its platform and thereby to ensure that the products sold to EU consumers conform to EU law.
•   using manipulative practices such as dark patterns to get consumers, for example, to spend more than they might originally want to, or to complicate the process of closing down their account.
•   failing to provide transparency about how it recommends products to consumers.

BEUC filed a complaint with the European Commission, while 17 of BEUC’s members filed the same complaint with their competent national authorities. For a more efficient and effective enforcement action, BEUC asks the Digital Services Coordinators of each country (national authorities responsible for enforcing the EU’s Digital Services Act) to transfer the complaints to the Irish authority, TEMU’s country of registration. It would then be up to the Irish authority to take swift action to prevent further consumer harm.

Given the fast growth in the number of TEMU users, it is possible that the platform would pass the threshold of 45 million users per month, which would then classify it as a ‘very large online platform’ and grant the Commission competence to enforce the Digital Services Act.

Given that consumer law enforcement, especially against large platforms, was less effective in the past (see for instance our reports here and here), a concerted EU action is a welcome solution.