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EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

bbc.co.uk

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Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#351

Post by f6v »

alephnerd wrote: post #153
f6v wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chinese overproduction a critical topic of discussion for EU-China relations Ah of course, I do want the state regulating what I can and cannot buy when it comes to junk. Only approved goods should be allowed.

European QoL is predicated on protecting European industry. Why should European workers lose their jobs because you want to buy something cheaper? If you don't build nor buy European, you become a vassal of either the US or China.

> Why should European workers lose their jobs because you want to buy something cheaper?

Competition, innovation, etc. Progress, you know.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#352

Post by croon »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #333
kergonath wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, that marketplace has no viable business. Society does not owe them anything. Seriously, if your business model requires you to sell illegal stuff, then your company does not deserve to survive. That’s the basics of regulation.

You're assuming the conclusion. Why is it the marketplace platform who should be the police? Should banks have to audit your life before you can open a bank account? Should you be unable to transact with anyone if you're not rich enough for them to justify that expense? It's not Walmart you're proposing to unperson here.

The sellers are in practice anonymous, and the consumer facing Temu (or Shein, or Aliexpress, etc) very much markets to consumers, yet shirk any responsibility. They are Walmart but ignore the little accountability Walmart faces.

Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#353

Post by dgellow »

cubefox wrote: post #276
ahartmetz wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't legalize all crime. Drugs are special because they are (sort of) victimless.

Drugs are absolutely not victimless, except perhaps for caffeine.

The only victim to weed are people getting jailed for it. Same for shrooms

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#355

Post by spwa4 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #57
spwa4 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying if I start a company in the EU that violates safety standards, copyright, trademarks, ... I will be allowed to profit of that for 3 years (let's pretend it's just 3 years that Chinese producers have been doing that) before facing any consequences and at that point STILL only be required to clean up my act (ie. not face any consequences for violations already done)? I find this incredibly, incredibly…

The EU does in fact not have an infinite amount of safety inspectors, however hard this is to believe for you.

Does it have enough to submit 1 chinese package to a safety inspector every 10 year? You know, because:

1) we all know it would only take a single one

2) they didn't do this for 20 years

In all seriousness. Does ANYONE believe that the EU commission/parliament did not know about this (despite millions of complaints) and only now discovered the problem? Is that seriously your point?

Or is it somewhat more believable that they did this with the express purpose of destroying local industry and the change is happening now because we have "Mercosur" causing the same issue, but moving from China to South America.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#356

Post by spwa4 »

johanvts wrote: post #72
spwa4 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying if I start a company in the EU that violates safety standards, copyright, trademarks, ... I will be allowed to profit of that for 3 years (let's pretend it's just 3 years that Chinese producers have been doing that) before facing any consequences and at that point STILL only be required to clean up my act (ie. not face any consequences for violations already done)? I find this incredibly, incredibly…

If you start the company in China and ship to EU. If you start it in a EU country I think local laws will stop you much faster than the EU commission. Still there are plenty of grifters that start fraudulent companies in the EU and roll assets into a new one as they bankrupt, and they can operate for decades before they eventually get stopped.

Exactly. This was an explicit policy by the EU to allow this for a very long time, destroying local industry.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#357

Post by tpm »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #346
tpm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still borders and customs inspections, that's how.

Just in a poxy country like the UK it's millions of parcels a day delivered across multiple ports mostly inside containers.... It's simply not feasible to check it all, it would cost a ton of money to have enough checkers and not slow down deliveries.

That's a failure of the state to control its borders.

> it would cost a ton of money

That's why the EU is imposing a €3 fixed customs duty per item (and later another €2 handling fee) effective July 1 (should have been much sooner in my opinion) for small packages (under €150), in addition to the VAT.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#358

Post by izacus »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #191
BrtByte wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will definitely look for alternatives, but that doesn't make regulation pointless

It helps funding the EU and little else.

Having the Chinese fund EU is an amazing idea from my European perspective.

Let's do more of that.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#359

Post by theshrike79 »

stdatomic wrote: post #322
dsign wrote: post #109

Say what you may of Temu, and I do think more vetting of certain goods is a good idea, but they fill a very real need. In the part of Europe where I live, the choice is only between intermediaries for the same products coming from China. The local intermediaries sell a very limited picking at staggering margins. And when it comes to certain things, like electronic components, the choice is between importing (old) Ame…

Really hits hard when you have to go to Home Depot to buy 6 spade connectors for $7.99 to use in a project with 3.3V 300mA max, when you can buy about 500 of them from Aliexpress for the same price.

And this is how I ended up with bags full of resistors, transistors, leds etc.

I can buy 3 from the local store or a BAG OF ONE HUNDRED from Aliexpress.

Not a hard decision tbh.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#360

Post by broken-kebab »

croon wrote: post #349
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are generally two ways governments hold companies accountable for dangerous products. The first is liability. If they're selling chargers that burn down houses, they get sued, and they don't want to get sued, so they don't want to sell chargers that burn down houses. The second is regulatory requirements. This one is generally worse. The incumbents capture the regulators to e.g. have the law require their techn…

We've already tried the third one in the US before the FDA. A ton of people kept dying. Milk was filled with borax and formaldehyde, coffee was cut with sawdust/charred bone/lead, spices were often 100% counterfeit. The market (heavily) incentivized fraud. In New York, in one year (1857), 8000 infants died to "swill milk" [0]. The second option (FDA and regulation) wasn't lobbied for, and the Food Bill of 1902 actual…

Invoking 1857 is not a valid argument really, cause consumer priorities were different. Cheaper with some level of risk (which today's American, or German would consider excessive) was preferred option hence the market response as it was - at least it's a reasonable guess.

In less rich countries it is how things work right now.

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