The rules are being written in Brussels. Does FESI give members a seat at the table?

The rules that matter are being written in Brussels, not Paris 

France has adopted the anti-fast-fashion law, aimed at protecting French players from Shein. But by design, it spares European giants Zara, H&M, Primark, and France’s own Kiabi and Decathlon. It doesn’t spare itself from critics. 

Three trade federations are already warning the law will miss its mark, and the reasons are concrete. 

To recap: The anti-fast-fashion bill is an escalating environmental penalty on the worst-rated products. The mechanism is two cumulative criteria: Catalog breadth, (the volume of references a brand pushes) and a repair-incentive coefficient, measuring how a product’s price compares to the cost of fixing it. Both have to be tripped for the malus to apply; a choice designed to isolate “ultra-fast-fashion” specifically.  

However, one lawmaker on the joint committee that finalized the text noted that Shein could simply split its catalogue across more entities to stay under the reference-count threshold that triggers the penalty. That alone would escape the malus without changing a single sale. 

Fevad, the French e-commerce federation, is separately warning that the law’s only rule with immediate effect – disclosing manufacturing origin next to the price – will force French retailers to scramble on final execution details while Shein and Temu, both legally established in Ireland, invoke EU country-of-origin law to contest it. 

Separately, France has already dropped its own €2 small-parcel tax, the “Papin penalty,” in the wake of the EU’s own flat €3 customs duty on small parcels that came into force across all 27 member states on July 1, 2026. One advocacy coalition working on the fast-fashion law has pointed to that tax as the cautionary tale: Chinese platforms adapted to it within weeks. 

Shein isn’t waiting to see how any of this plays out. It already runs a roughly 100-football-pitch warehouse in Poland, opened in December, giving it EU-legal ground to route around whatever France writes next. 

There is a clear trend emerging: The rules that will actually govern sustainability and trade in this industry are being written at EU level, not in national capitals. If that’s true, the obvious next question is whether European brands have a real seat at that table and whether they should be doing more, collectively, to hold it. 

FESI: the Brussels voice of European sporting goods 

There is, in fact, a body built exactly for this.  

The Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry, FESI, is headquartered in Brussels, a short walk from the Commission buildings whose delegated acts it exists to influence. Founded in 1960, it positions itself as the voice of the European sporting goods industry. 

It’s registered in the EU Transparency Register and accredited at the European Parliament, with seats on: 

● The Ecodesign Forum – the expert group shaping what the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and the Digital Product Passport will require of textiles and footwear; 

● The EU’s Trade Contact Group; 

● The Textile Labelling expert group;

● The Personal Protective Equipment group; 

This past year alone, FESI has filed detailed positions on the Textile Labelling Regulation revision, the Circular Economy Act and product legislation more broadly, arguing, among other things, for a single EU-wide digital entry point per product and against fragmented national labelling rules. That’s the Brussels fight, in real time. 

But how “European” are the brands that make up The Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry, who’s accountable for deciding, and does it matter? 

How European is FESI? The membership question 

FESI’s members page lists close to 100 directly affiliated companies. But the roster complicates the question of “Who counts as European?” before the debate even starts. 

Alongside European names like Decathlon, Salomon, adidas, Puma and Rossignol sit a long list of non-European brands, including: 

● Nike and New Balance 

● Arc’teryx and Lululemon  

● The North Face, Timberland, Vans and Smartwool – all VF Corp  

Most of these are American or otherwise headquartered outside Europe. VF Corp alone accounts for four names on that list. 

That’s not automatically a problem. Nike and VF Corp employ tens of thousands of people in Europe, import and distribute through the same customs and compliance regime as any French or Austrian manufacturer, and have every commercial reason to want clear, harmonized EU rules rather than 27 different national regimes. Their direct presence is legitimate – it’s exactly the kind of scale and technical resource that means FESI can make a position paper on the simplification of Circular Economy legislation and have it land at the appropriate place within the Commission. 

But by FESI’s own filings, that direct list of members is only a fraction of who it claims to represent. The real figure is closer to 1,800 manufacturers and retailers, roughly 85 percent of the European market, once the national federations behind it are counted. Federations like The European Outdoor Group (176 members), Spain is Sport (103 members) and the VSSÖ Association of Austrian Sporting Goods Manufacturers and Retailers (380+ members). 

That reach is genuinely valuable – it’s how a fragmented industry gets any collective voice in Brussels at all. 

The two routes into FESI (by brand or by federation) carry very different weight, though. A company reached only through its national federation has its interests folded into a single national position before they ever reach Brussels, with no individual accountability for whether that position served them well or simply reflected whoever in the room had the most resources. A company like Nike or VF Corp, by contrast, has a direct seat at the table and appears on the member list by name. 

In reality, “European interest” isn’t a tangible “fact” that FESI represents. What’s represented is whatever gets negotiated down to a common line inside the room, by whichever members are actually sitting in it. 

When European interest isn’t one thing 

This does sharpen the question hiding underneath: “Should European brands rally together?” Rally around what, exactly? 

A federation whose most resourced direct members are global groups – with in-house Brussels affairs teams, global sourcing footprints in Asia, and no particular commercial interest in protectionist EU-first rules – is obviously not  the same coalition as a mid-size French or German technical-outdoor manufacturer. A manufacturer trying to survive both ultra-fast-fashion price competition and the compliance cost of a Digital Product Passport without, for example, Nike’s legal budget. 

Those two constituents converge on some things: simpler labelling, one digital entry point, less national fragmentation. They diverge sharply on others, including the customs-enforcement and country-of-origin questions this column has been tracking. 

A federation built to serve both regional federations and directly affiliated companies will by default gravitate towards the asks that cost its biggest members nothing. Those tend to be the harmonization asks, not the ones that would actually squeeze Shein-style, non-EU direct-to-consumer flows harder. 

FESI itself says 70 to 75 percent of its membership by count is small and medium enterprises: Too small to build parallel compliance systems for a French rule, a Belgian workaround and a coming EU handling fee, and too small to have their own Brussels desk. Almost none of them sit at FESI’s table directly – nearly all are in the anonymous mass behind national-federation figures. 

FESI’s own stated ambition is to be, in its words, “Europe’s leading trade association, shaping policies that benefit members, people and planet.” That’s a fine vision. 

The uncomfortable test of effectiveness isn’t whether FESI shows up in Brussels: It demonstrably does, dossier after dossier. It’s whether the members it claims actually know that is what is happening, or could name a single position FESI has taken on their behalf. 

Ask most brand owners at a national sporting goods federation what FESI argued for in its Textile Labelling Regulation submission earlier this year, or where it landed on eco-modulation in the Circular Economy Act consultation. The honest answer is usually silence. 

What sporting goods brands can do now 

So, what can sporting goods brands do? The call to action isn’t “Found a rival federation!” or “Cancel your FESI dues!” 

It’s smaller, and it starts this quarter, while the Ecodesign delegated acts for textiles, the Digital Product Passport requirements and the Union Handling Fee are all still being drafted rather than settled: 

● Find out, concretely, whether your national federation is one of FESI’s members and ask for the position papers it has co-signed or fed into over the past twelve months; 

● Ask who physically sits on FESI’s Ecodesign Forum and Trade Contact Group seats, and request a briefing, not a newsletter, on what was actually said there on your sector’s behalf; 

● Compare that position against your own commercial exposure. If your company is a mid-size European manufacturer squeezed by both fast-fashion pricing and compliance cost, and the position on file reads like a harmonization ask that mainly benefits companies with in-house compliance teams, say so, in writing, before the delegated act closes, not after; 

● If the answer to any of the above is a shrug, treat that as the finding. A federation whose members can’t say what it’s doing for them isn’t shaping policy on their behalf so much as shaping it in their name. 

A seat at the table is not the same thing as a voice at it. A vision statement is not the same thing as visibility. Right now, most of the industry FESI says it represents has the first of both, it’s worth checking whether they have the second.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the editorial position of SGI Europe.

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