Chinese language on-line retailer Temu might be investigated over whether or not it might have breached guidelines aimed toward stopping the sale of unlawful merchandise, EU tech regulators stated on Tuesday, in a transfer that would result in hefty fines for the corporate.
The EU investigation will even give attention to the possibly addictive design of Temu’s service, together with its game-like reward programmes, and its programs to advocate purchases to customers.
The European Fee launched its probe underneath the Digital Providers Act (DSA), which requires very massive on-line platforms reminiscent of Temu to do extra to sort out unlawful and dangerous content material on their platforms, following complaints by pan-European customers organisation BEUC and 17 of its nationwide members.
“There’s a actual type of, , suspicion, that not sufficient is finished, in an efficient means, to actually stop the dissemination of unlawful merchandise. Rogue merchants are reappearing with completely different identities,” an EU official instructed reporters.
Temu, which has 92 million customers within the 27-country European Union and is a unit of Chinese language ecommerce large PDD Holdings, stated it can cooperate with regulators.
“Temu takes its obligations underneath the DSA significantly, repeatedly investing to strengthen our compliance system and safeguard client pursuits on our platform,” the corporate stated in a press release.
The corporate additionally stated it was in talks to affix a voluntary EU initiative to counter the sale of counterfeit merchandise.
The EU tech enforcer will even examine whether or not Temu is complying with the DSA obligation to supply researchers entry to its publicly accessible knowledge.
“We need to be certain that Temu is complying with the Digital Providers Act. Notably in making certain that merchandise offered on their platform meet EU requirements and don’t hurt customers,” EU antitrust and tech chief Margrethe Vestager stated in a press release.
Temu might face a nice of as a lot as 6 p.c of its world turnover if discovered responsible of breaching the DSA.
