The EU imposes tougher rules on Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion champion

Brussels on Friday added the champion of cheap ready-to-wear Shein to the list of very large online platforms subject to reinforced controls under the new legislation on digital services (DSA). The application founded in China in 2012, emblem of the social and environmental excesses of low-cost fashion, becomes the 23rd platform, alongside X, TikTok, Google or Facebook, to be subject to the strictest European rules for " protect consumers against illegal content,” the European Commission announced in a press release.

Shein, a “fast-fashion” specialist, which has its head office in Singapore, sells its clothes exclusively online, to a young clientele very present on social networks. It claims 108 million users of its site in the European Union each month, significantly more than the threshold of 45 million from which players can be subject to reinforced regulation.

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These companies must in particular analyze the risks linked to their services in terms of dissemination of illegal content or products and put in place the means to mitigate them. This analysis must be the subject of an annual report submitted to the European Commission, which now assumes the role of digital policeman in the EU. “Measures should be implemented to protect consumers against the purchase of dangerous or illegal products, with particular emphasis on preventing the sale and distribution of products that could be harmful to minors,” he said. explained the Commission. Very large platforms must also provide the regulator with access to their algorithms so that compliance with the regulation can be monitored. They must undergo an independent external audit once a year, at their own expense.

Violators of the rules can be fined up to 6% of their annual global turnover, or even banned from operating in Europe in the event of serious and repeated violations. Reacting to its designation as a very large platform on Friday, Shein affirmed its desire to comply with European rules. “We share the Commission's ambition to ensure that EU consumers can shop online with peace of mind and are committed to playing our part,” said Leonard Lin, Global Head of Public Affairs at the Commission. band.

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The very large platforms affected by reinforced European controls also include the online commerce giant Amazon and its competitor AliExpress, a subsidiary of the Chinese giant Alibaba. Another Chinese e-commerce app, Temu, is expected to be added to this list soon after announcing in April that it had around 75 million monthly users in the European Union.

The DSA showed its effectiveness this week by requiring TikTok to suspend in the EU the functionality of its new TikTok Lite application which rewards users for time spent in front of screens. The Commission feared the risk of addiction, particularly for adolescents, and opened an investigation. She suspects the social network, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, of not having conducted the obligatory risk analysis, in particular for the mental health of users.

Still within the framework of the DSA, Brussels also opened an investigation in December targeting the social network X for alleged breaches of content moderation obligations.