Report from Reuters
In Brief – France’s Minister of Small and Medium Businesses says Shein and other online retail platforms will face a “year of resistance” from traditional storefront retailers and their backers in the government. Serge Papin argued that retail platforms pose unfair competition to French store chains, saying that stores are responsible for the goods they sell on their shelves, while online platforms are not. The comments came as a Paris court is set to hear an appeal from the government to a December court ruling rejecting a Paris prosecutor’s request to shut down Shein’s website for three months. Minister Papin said breaches of consumer rules on Shein were “systemic”, that he was confident the court will agree that the platform presented a “disturbance to public order”, and that French lawmakers are preparing a bill that would allow the government to suspend online platforms without the need for court approval.
Context – When Shein opened its first physical shop in Europe in a Paris department store in early November, it drew shoppers, protestors, and swift government action. The French Finance Ministry moved to block Shein’s website but suspended that effort when third-party sales were stopped by Shein. The Paris public prosecutor’s office continued pursuing a three-month suspension of the full website, but a Paris court rejected that motion. The CEO of a French grocery store chain has called for Shein and Temu to be banned in Europe entirely for two years while new rules to regulate them are crafted, and a coalition of French retailers and brand owners have filed a €3 billion class action lawsuit accusing the Shein of unfair competition. Consumer advocates and traditional retailers in Europe have long complained about the sale of unsafe products on digital marketplace, with Temu and Shein now joining Amazon and AliExpress as top targets. The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) regulates how online marketplaces deal with illegal and objectionable products and content and the European Commission has opened investigations of AliExpress and Temu and face calls to add Shein.