Chinese e-commerce giant Temu has been fined €200 million ($232 million) by the European Union for failing to stop the sale of unsafe baby toys and chargers on the platform.
The European Commission, responsible for overseeing EU rules aimed at technology companies, said in a statement that its investigation, which included purchases made on Temu in a “mystery shopper operation”, often found products that posed a danger to buyers.
A high percentage of the toys tested contained high levels of chemicals and posed a choking hazard due to detachable parts, the commission said. Many chargers on sale also failed basic safety tests, he added. The regulator also blamed Temu’s recommendation algorithms for helping to spread illegal products.
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— Temu had clearly been underestimating the risks of its services — Henna Virkkunen, EU technology commissioner, told journalists during a press conference, while drinking coffee from a fun mug with the phrase “It’s DSA O’ Clock”, (‘It’s DSA time’, in free translation), an allusion to the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European bloc’s Digital Services Law.
The company was fined under the European bloc’s Digital Services Law, which requires companies with more than 45 million users in the EU to assess and mitigate risks arising from their online platforms. Violations can result in fines of up to 6% of a company’s annual global sales.
Temu, a subsidiary of Chinese PDD Holdings, is only the second company to suffer law enforcement measures, following the fine of €120 million (US$139.6 million) imposed in December 2025 on Elon Musk’s social network X.
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PDD has become one of the main companies in Chinese e-commerce by selling cheaper products to smaller cities and rural areas, where more people shop online, which helped it surpass the market value of Alibaba Group, which owns AliExpress, in 2023. Its Temu brand competes with Shein and Amazon in the US and Europe. But its recent performance has been partly hampered by a prolonged economic slowdown in China.
The commission said Temu will now have two months to propose a plan that responds to the EU’s concerns, which will need to be approved by the commission before implementation. Failure to comply may result in the imposition of new periodic penalties. Separately, Temu may challenge the fine in court. Temu did not respond to a request for comment until the report was published.
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