Strasbourg (France) (AFP) – EU lawmakers on Wednesday called to make it easier to suspend e-commerce platforms, following outrage in France over the sale of childlike sex dolls on Shein, and demanded better policing of such websites. The French government is seeking a three-month suspension of the platform, with a court to hear the case on December 5 after it was postponed Wednesday.
One of the EU’s landmark laws, the Digital Services Act (DSA), gives Brussels the power to temporarily suspend a platform as a last-resort measure. A majority of European Parliament lawmakers backed a non-binding resolution saying such a suspension “should no longer be treated as an exceptional, last-resort measure”. The text urged “the swifter and easier activation of interim measures…including the temporary suspension of the operation of online marketplaces in cases of repeated, serious or systemic breaches of EU law, such as the case concerning Shein in France”.
Lawmakers also demanded EU states and the European Commission enforce the DSA, and called for better enforcement of rules including on product safety. The Paris prosecutor’s office this month started probes into Shein and rival online retailer AliExpress over the sale of the sex dolls. Shein, founded in China in 2012 but now based in Singapore, has vowed to cooperate with French authorities and has said it is banning all sex dolls.
EU lawmakers also expressed concern over the large number of “non-compliant” small parcels from Shein and other non-EU platforms. They pointed to “the underpaid labour, unlawful imitation of designers’ work, the marketing of unsafe and non-compliant products, and the accumulation of textile waste”. The EU hopes to scrap a bloc-wide duty exemption on low-value orders to help tackle a flood of cheap Chinese imports by the start of 2026, rather than 2028 as earlier planned. Currently, there is no levy on packages worth less than 150 euros ($174) imported directly to consumers in the 27-nation bloc.
© 2024 AFP
