Commission fines Temu €200 million for breaching the Digital Services Act

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Today, the European Commission issued a fine of €200 million to Temu under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The company failed to diligently identify, analyse, and assess the systemic risks of illegal products being offered on its platform and the resulting harm to consumers in the European Union.

The evidence at the disposal of the Commission indicates that consumers in the EU are very likely to encounter illegal items on Temu.  

Temu’s risk assessment of 2024 falls short of the standards laid out in the DSA:

• It is based on general information about risks concerning the eCommerce sector as a whole, rather than on specific evidence about Temu’s own service, including public reports and testing.
• It seriously underestimated how often EU consumers are likely to encounter illegal items. Evidence from a mystery shopping exercise included in the Commission’s investigation shows that a very high percentage of the selected chargers failed basic safety tests, while a high percentage of tested baby toys posed safety risks of medium to high severity, as they contain chemicals exceeding legal safety limits or pose suffocation hazards due to detachable parts.
• It did not properly assess how the design of its service – including recommender systems and product promotion programmes by affiliated influencers – could amplify dissemination risks of illegal products.

Under the DSA, designated Very Large Online Platforms are required to diligently assess systemic risks linked to their services and adopt corresponding mitigation measures.

The fine issued today was calculated taking into account the nature of the infringement, its gravity in terms of affected EU users, and its duration. Failing to conduct proper risk assessments – one of the cornerstones of the DSA’s architecture – is a particularly serious infringement of the DSA. 

Next steps

Temu has until 28 August 2026 to submit an action plan to the Commission, as required by Article 75 of the DSA. The plan must set out measures to remedy the breach of its risk-assessment obligations. The European Board for Digital Services will have one month from receipt of the plan to issue its opinion. The Commission will then have a further month to adopt its final decision and set a reasonable period for implementation.

Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments. The Commission continues to engage with Temu to ensure compliance with the decision and with the DSA more generally.

Background

On 31 October 2024 the Commission opened formal proceedings against Temu, including on its obligation to assess systemic risks relating to the dissemination of illegal products on its service. The Commission adopted preliminary findings in July 2025 and is closing them with a non-compliance decision today.

The non-compliance decision issued today is based, amongst others, on Temu’s 2024 and interim 2025 risk assessment reports, the replies to the Commission’s formal requests for information on 28 June 2024 and 11 October 2024, information shared by third parties and a mystery shopping exercise carried out by an independent testing organisation on behalf of the Commission. The investigation also relied on data from EU customs and market surveillance authorities, which revealed high rates of non-compliance among products sold on Temu in the categories tested.