German government wants to take tougher action against Temu, Shein & Co.

The German government adopted an e-commerce action plan on Wednesday. It is intended to make a decisive contribution to making online trade "safer and fairer". The aim is to enforce applicable law more consistently against online marketplaces and retailers from third countries and the EU. One focus here is on large Chinese providers such as Temu, Shein and Alibaba, which flood the market with what are sometimes perceived to be bargains and illegal offers. "Our high European standards must apply equally to everyone", emphasized Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens). No one should gain an advantage by not adhering to the rules.

Specifically, the executive is calling for the plan to strengthen market surveillance both nationally and at EU level. Competent authorities should automate their checks using special web crawlers, for example, and focus better on e-commerce. According to the initiative, the planned digital product passport should be designed in such a way that it contains all relevant information to prove compliance with the relevant EU regulations. This should make it easier to find black sheep. The government is also pushing for customs controls to be tightened and the 150-euro exemption limit for customs clearance to be lifted (currently only import VAT is payable on goods under 150 euros). E-commerce platforms should be more responsible for the goods they broker.

Cause for concern: dark patterns and a lack of data protection

The executive wants the Digital Services Act (DSA) to be used to take effective, simple and quick action against marketplaces that sell illegal products or engage in illegal business practices. It mentions, for example, unsafe goods or goods that do not comply with the law due to brand and product piracy or breaches of consumer law. Platforms would have to block accounts if entrepreneurs "did not provide minimum information on identifiability" and thus violated the "Know Your Business Customer" principle. Stricter action is also needed against "manipulative, misleading and addictive designs" (dark patterns). Consumer advocates and the responsible minister, Steffi Lemke (Greens) see a great need for action here.

"We are observing that online retail platforms are collecting personal data on a large scale and using it for profiling and advertising purposes," says the caretaker government with concern. In some cases, the focus of the business interest is not the sale of goods, but the commercial exploitation of this information. This could entail considerable risks for the consumers concerned. It is therefore important that the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR) are observed in all EU countries. In October, the EU Commission initiated proceedings against Temu for possible DSA violations.

(mma)