BRUSSELS, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Chinese online retailer
Temu will be investigated on whether it may have breached EU
tech rules against the sale of illegal products, EU tech
regulators said on Tuesday, in a move which could lead to hefty
fines for the company.
The EU investigation will also focus on the potentially
addictive design of Temu's service, including its game-like
reward programmes, and its systems to recommend purchases to
users.
The European Commission launched its probe under the Digital
Services Act (DSA), which requires very large online platforms
such as Temu to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on
their platforms, following complaints by pan-European consumers
organisation BEUC and 17 of its national members.
Temu, which has 92 million users in the 27-country European
Union, is a unit of Chinese ecommerce giant PDD Holdings ( PDD )
.
The EU tech enforcer will also investigate whether Temu is
complying with the DSA obligation to provide researchers access
to its publicly accessible data.
"We want to ensure that Temu is complying with the Digital
Services Act. Particularly in ensuring that products sold on
their platform meet EU standards and do not harm consumers," EU
antitrust and tech chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
Temu could face a fine of as much as 6% of its global
turnover if found guilty of breaching the DSA.