For an hour on Tuesday 27 January, Shein faced an avalanche of criticism about the safety of its products from MEPs on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), who were very angry with the platform.
The recent scandal involving the sale of childlike sex dolls on the platform (see EUROPE 13760/16), which broke in France last November, is at the root of this indictment. The European Parliament immediately called for Shein to be suspended in the EU (see EUROPE 13759/5).
Faced with these abuses, the Commission has sent several requests for information to Shein (see EUROPE 13574/10) and, at the hearing, stated that this information is in the final analysis phase. The option of a formal procedure is still on the table, but not yet decided.
Not good enough, according to many MEPs, who are calling on the Commission to take aggressive action, starting with suspending the platform. Underlying the discussions, several MEPs took the opportunity to point out the limitations of the Digital Services Regulation (DSA), which is considered ill-suited to online commerce and insufficiently dissuasive.
Members of the European Parliament have been increasingly critical, denouncing a model that is deemed “systematically dangerous”, opaque and “incompatible with European consumer protection rules”. Both left and right have demanded swift and binding measures, even going so far as to mention suspending the platform if the violations observed continue.
“If a European company had done a quarter of a third of what you have done, it would have closed a long time ago. Problems with the safety of the products sold, violations of consumer rights, violations of DSA compliance, problems with tax transparency, failure to respect intellectual property, major problems with ethics and, above all, with the law, when you sell products made from forced labour, child sex dolls, medicines or weapons, for example. Honestly, contrary to what you claim, the menu is just mind-boggling”, heavily criticised Yvan Verougstraete (Renew Europe, Belgian), one of the most active MEPs against Shein’s excesses.
In its defence, Shein was keen to point out that it had reacted swiftly to the alerts and was willing to cooperate fully with the European authorities, but it was all alone in the face of the parliamentary offensive. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)