After the US Postal Service temporarily halted deliveries from China and Hong Kong, EU officials announced new fees on packages from e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu as well as an investigation into Shein for dangerous The European Commission announced on Wednesday, February 5, that it would seek to impose new fees on e-commerce imports, as part of efforts to tackle a surge of “harmful” products into the bloc – the bulk of them coming from China.
The commission also confirmed the launch of an investigation into the online sales platform Shein for not abiding by the bloc’s consumer protection rules. If Shein is found guilty it risks being fined.You can share an article by clicking on the share icons at the top right of it.
Announcing the import fees at a press conference in Brussels, EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said the bloc had seen the number of imported e-commerce parcels double from 2023 to 2024, to reach 12 million a day. “Many of those products have been found to be unsafe, counterfeit or even dangerous,” she said.
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The commission called on EU lawmakers and member states to “consider” a handling fee on e-commerce parcels imported directly to consumers, to address the “costs of supervising compliance” with EU rules.
The move “aims to address growing concerns about the impact of those products on the health and safety of European consumers,” Virkkunen said, adding: “It also looks into the significant environmental and climate damage caused by those shipments, and also the unlevel playing field which rogue traders create for our SMEs and businesses.”
Around 90% of the packages concerned come from China, according to the commission, many of them sold by booming online giants Shein and Temu. Both Chinese-founded platforms are suspected by Brussels of not doing enough to prevent the sale of products that do not meet European standards.
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Shein ‘should play by the rules’
Speaking on the investigation into Shein, the EU’s consumer protection chief, Michael McGrath said: “Any business that wants to benefit from our market of almost 450 million consumers should play by the rules,” said
Brussels is coordinating the investigation with the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, which brings together the competent authorities of the bloc’s 27 member states.
The commission had also opened an investigation in October against Temu, which sells a vast array of goods at low costs.
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