The European Commission fined Chinese online shopping platform Temu €200 million on Thursday, the largest ever penalty under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), after investigators found consumers were very likely to encounter dangerous and illegal products including unsafe baby toys, defective chargers, contaminated jewellery and chemically treated clothing on the platform.
The fine followed a 19-month investigation launched in October 2024 after complaints filed by the Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs (BEUC), a pan-European consumer organisation, and 17 of its member groups. As part of the investigation, the Commission carried out an independent mystery shopping exercise in which products purchased directly from Temu were submitted to laboratory testing. Results showed that a very high percentage of selected chargers failed basic electrical safety standards and posed risks of burns, electric shocks and fire. A high proportion of tested baby toys contained chemicals above EU legal limits, including phthalates, and featured small detachable parts presenting suffocation or strangulation hazards.
The Commission found that Temu’s 2024 risk assessment, required under the DSA, fell far below the legal standard. Rather than conducting analysis specific to its own platform, Temu relied on general information about risks across the broader e-commerce sector, leaving regulators without a clear picture of the actual scale of harm.
Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said the risk assessment “underestimates concrete risks, lacks specificity, is not grounded in solid evidence, and is not comprehensive,” before adding: “Now it is time for Temu to comply with the law.”
The €200 million penalty is the second ever issued under the DSA, which has applied to the world’s largest online platforms since February 2024. It follows a €120 million fine imposed on Elon Musk’s X in December 2025 over deceptive verification badges and insufficient advertising transparency. Under the DSA, platforms designated as Very Large Online Platforms, those with more than 45 million EU users, can be fined up to 6 percent of global annual turnover. Temu’s parent company, PDD Holdings, reported global revenues of $54 billion in 2024, meaning the fine represents a fraction of maximum exposure.
Commission officials said the investigation into Temu is continuing. Additional enforcement actions are possible in separate inquiries examining the sale of illegal products, the platform’s potentially addictive design features, and whether Temu has provided adequate access to data for independent researchers.
Temu has until August 28, 2026 to submit an action plan to the Commission setting out how it will remedy its risk-assessment failures. The European Board for Digital Services will then have one month to review the plan before the Commission issues a final decision. Failure to comply could trigger further periodic financial penalties.
Temu said it is reviewing the decision and described the fine as “disproportionate,” adding that it relates to its first DSA assessment in 2024 and does not reflect improvements it has since made to platform governance and user protection.
Temu has become widely used across Africa, including in Ghana, where many consumers use the platform to purchase electronics, children’s products, clothing and household goods. The EU findings about product safety failures raise concerns about the safety of items shipped to markets where import product testing is less systematic.
