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Marketplaces in China on trial

Marketplaces in China on trial

AliExpress, Temu and Shein under EU fire: what our low-cost shopping really hides

On July 20, the European Commission fined AliExpress 550 million euros, the highest penalty ever issued under the Digital Services Act. The reason? The platform failed to stop the sale of illegal, unsafe, and counterfeit products, even though European rules require it to do so. It’s not an isolated case: in recent months, Temu and Shein have also ended up under scrutiny from Brussels and national authorities. Yet shopping on Chinese marketplaces keeps growing at a pace Europe has never seen before.

I bought a few things on Temu myself: a bag, a swimsuit, and a couple of T-shirts. Then I stopped, because every time I added another item to the cart, the same question kept coming back to me: who stitched this shirt, and under what conditions?

A record fine: what AliExpress actually did

According to the European Commission, AliExpress overestimated how well its own control systems worked, letting counterfeit clothing, fake cosmetics, hazardous toys and unsafe kitchen accessories circulate freely. The Digital Services Act, which came into force in 2024 precisely to protect online shoppers, requires large platforms to systematically identify and reduce this kind of risk. AliExpress now has until October 20 to submit a compliance plan: if it doesn’t, it risks periodic penalties that, under the DSA, can reach up to 6% of its global annual turnover. The company, for its part, has called the fine “disproportionate” and announced it will appeal.

Not just AliExpress: Temu and Shein are in the spotlight too

AliExpress isn’t the only Chinese company in trouble with Brussels. Last May 30, the Commission fined Temu 200 million euros, arguing it had relied on generic industry-wide data instead of properly assessing the risks specific to its own platform. Among the flagged items: chargers with fire hazards, toys containing banned chemicals, out-of-spec cosmetics and fake CE certifications. Shein hasn’t been spared either: in Italy, the antitrust authority fined it one million euros for misleading environmental claims, the classic greenwashing that promises sustainability while shipping two-euro t-shirts.

How much are Italians (and the rest of the world) actually buying on these marketplaces?

The numbers help explain why Brussels has pushed so hard. Global e-commerce topped 6.5 trillion dollars in 2025, with China alone accounting for roughly 45% of that value. In Europe, Temu grew 133% in Italy over the past year, climbing to second place in the country’s overall e-commerce ranking, right behind Amazon. Shein grew 43% and now counts five million monthly visits in fashion alone, second only to Zalando. In 2024, more than four billion low-value parcels arrived in Europe, three times the 2022 figure, a surge that pushed the EU to scrap the duty exemption for orders under 150 euros.

What are we really risking when an order costs two euros?

The EU’s rapid alert system for risky products, Safety Gate, logged 4,137 reports in 2024 alone. Three categories remain the most problematic. Electronics, with fake CE marks, fire hazards and counterfeit memory chips. Cosmetics, with phthalates and lead above legal limits and undeclared ingredients on the label. Toys, with non-compliant parts and choking hazards for young children. On top of that come more mundane but still annoying issues: items that don’t match their online description, endless delivery times and returns that are a hassle to sort out. Something is finally changing on that last point: starting June 19, 2026, an EU directive requires every online store to add a visible, working withdrawal button, as I wrote in my piece on the new returns law. It’s a welcome extra layer of protection for shoppers, though it may well push up costs, and maybe prices too, in a business that already runs on razor-thin margins.

The problem you don’t see: who’s actually making these products

There’s one side of the story that, in my view, doesn’t get told often enough: the labour behind the scenes. Shein and Temu are periodically evaluated for inclusion on international forced-labour watchlists, and investigative reporting over the past few years has documented gruelling shifts and rock-bottom wages in the factories that supply these platforms. The issue, by the way, isn’t confined to China: in Tuscany, in Prato, police arrested a business owner this July for exploiting undocumented workers through sixteen-hour shifts, paid by the piece, some of them reportedly locked inside the workshop to keep production going. I’m not saying that specific case involves Temu or Shein, but the context says a lot about how exposed the textile supply chain remains, wherever it operates. It’s a theme I also touched on when writing about food delivery riders: different sectors, but the same underlying question, namely how much we’re willing to look away from in order to save a few euros.

My own experience, and why I stopped buying

I don’t have any grand certainties to offer here, just a discomfort that’s stayed with me since I started asking questions about the journey a garment takes before it reaches my closet. I ordered a bag, a swimsuit, and a few t-shirts on Temu, driven more by curiosity than actual need. They arrived within a reasonable time, and the quality wasn’t terrible, but the thought of who had sewn them, and under what conditions, wouldn’t leave me alone. So I stopped, not as some heroic gesture but because continuing to ignore the question felt, quite simply, dishonest toward myself.

Would things be any different if I bought elsewhere?

I asked myself that too: if I’d ordered the same bag from another website, or bought it in a physical store, would the risk of exploitation have disappeared? Honestly, no, or at least not automatically. In December 2025, Milan’s public prosecutor requested documents from thirteen fashion houses, including Gucci, Prada, Versace, Dolce&Gabbana and Missoni, to check working conditions across their supply chains. In previous years, companies like Armani, Manufactures Dior and Valentino had already been placed under judicial administration for labor exploitation in the workshops that stitched bags and garments destined for the most exclusive boutiques. Those cases had nothing to do with two-euro t-shirts: they involved items sold for thousands of euros on Milan’s most fashionable streets.

All this makes me think that the sales channel, online or in-store, cheap or luxury, matters less than we’d like to believe. What really makes the difference is how closely a company monitors its suppliers and subcontractors, and how much transparency it’s willing to guarantee across that production chain. Chinese marketplaces are probably still more exposed, since they move huge volumes on razor-thin margins, which makes oversight harder and the temptation to cut corners on labor stronger. But believing that simply shifting your shopping to a downtown store or a heritage brand keeps you safe would, in the end, be a comforting illusion rather than a genuinely informed choice.

What we can do as shoppers

These European fines are an important signal, but on their own they won’t change our daily habits. A few practical habits can help: checking whether a seller has a verifiable identity, being wary of prices that seem too good to be true for electrical goods or cosmetics, reading reviews with a critical eye and, whenever possible, looking into a brand’s production chain. None of this solves the whole problem, but it does bring a bit of awareness back into a routine, online shopping, that by now we do almost on autopilot.

Related sources

All the sources below are in Italian.

Chiara Bonifazi