EU Warns Temu on Safety of Products Sold on Its Platform

By Edith Hancock

The European Commission said Temu hasn't done enough to assess the risks of illegal products being sold online and that as a result, the China-linked e-commerce platform might be in breach of the bloc's new digital services law.

The commission said Monday that there is a high risk consumers can find unsafe products on Temu's website such as baby toys and small electronics.

This is the next stage in a sprawling probe into Temu's platform under the Digital Services Act--a relatively new piece of legislation that governs content online in the European Union. Companies that run widely popular online platforms, such as e-commerce websites, are obligated to assess how likely consumers are to be exposed to dangerous or illegal products and work to mitigate that risk. The EU has warned Temu, which is owned by PDD Holdings, that it suspects a risk assessment it carried out in 2024 was inaccurate.

The watchdog started investigating Temu in October last year over concerns it is falling short of complying with the law. The company could face a fine of up to 6% of its annual worldwide turnover if the commission ultimately decides its risk assessment doesn't meet the companies' obligations under the DSA.

Officials will also continue probing the company over other suspected breaches of the DSA such as using addictive design features and a lack of transparency on its algorithms, the commission said.

"In our preliminary view, Temu is far from assessing risks for its users at the standards required by the Digital Services Act," Henna Virkkunen, the commission's top tech enforcer, said in a statement.

The EU is trying to counter what it sees as a glut of cheap and potentially unsafe products from China flooding the single market. Officials separately sent a formal warning to Shein in May, saying the company's sales tactics fall foul of EU consumer protection law.

Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com