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.