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.
This is also part of the EU's larger tariffs against China [3].
[0] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1361926.shtml
[1] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362200.shtml
[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362161.shtml
[3] - https://www.ft.com/content/e28fe696-ac30-4543-a105-febc82789...
According to Eurostat, the average gross annual salary in the EU is around €39,800 per year for full-time employment. The average net salary comes to roughly €2,461 per month, or about €29,500 net per year.
0.4% of an average worker's gross annual salary = roughly €159.
If you sell something on your site, or allow users to post something on your site, you should have some liability for the consequences.
But this is an internet store.
I try to a avoid Temu, but they have some good traits, too, like quick and convinient shipping.
bigclivedotcom takes apart some of the Temu stuff on YouTube and some of the electronics is atrocious.
Generally speaking, international direct-to-consumer e-commerce is a problem for trying to enforce these kinds of rules. The whole model of checks at the border works well for massive bulk shipments, which not only are few enough in number that customs have a chance of doing a proper job on them, but there's also a commercial importer taking a large financial risk on the shipment and therefore 1) having an incentive to ensure they import something safe to begin with, 2) they can be practically fined/sued by authorities if they screw up. But when you have myriad tiny operations selling direct to consumers, the consumer is the importer, and there's no local representative for the manufacturer that you can actually sue. It's effectively a quite lawless area. Being able to do direct imports is an important freedom, and this kind of laxity is inevitable, but it's understandable the EU wants to do something about the flood of poor-quality goods that are terrible for fair competition, the environment, and health and safety.
In my country the government is pushing those companies to have local warehouses. So if items are bulk imported by the marketplace, in theory it should be easier to inspect.
In the old days, when an importer purchased Chinese goods in bulk and resold them, import checks were commonplace.... AND the importer was legally responsible for paying import duties and selling goods to the public that were legal and met safety standards.
Now that any individual can order direct from China (with cheap subsidised postage!), the floodgates of untaxed and dangerous shite are open.
One solution is to address the subsidised postage that makes this state of affairs possible.
The old system of spot inspections worked because most import volume was from known, repeat importers.
Or is the intention of the law to allow for an unlimited number of supposedly illegal goods to circulate freely within the EU, just fined appropriately?
https://cemarkingassociation.co.uk/latest-news/ce-marking-an...
https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-c...
https://starfishmedical.com/resource/conformite-europeenne-m...
The policemen controlling imports don't have the competency to check for faults, so we get this situation where specialists regularly sample the products, and heavy fines are issued to the importer.
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 the Chinese perception that the EU is a has-been [7] as well as 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...