The EU Commission has opened a formal investigation into the fast-fashion marketplace Temu – registered in Massachusetts as WhaleCo Inc., owned by China’s PDD Holdings – to determine whether it breached the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The Commission seeks to determine, among other things, whether Temu is doing enough to limit the “sale of non-compliant products,” the “reappearance of non-compliant goods,” or the “reappearance of previously suspended rogue traders”; whether its “game-like reward programs” are harming customers in mind and body; whether it is concealing the parameters of its recommendations system and failing to provide customers with “at least one easily accessible option that is not based on profiling”; and whether it has been withholding data from researchers.
There is no legal limit to the investigation’s duration, but the Commission says that the opening of an investigation “does not prejudge its outcome.” Nor does it prevent market-surveillance authorities from taking their own actions under the General Product Safety Directive.
