{"id":30208,"date":"2026-06-03T17:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/30208\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:10:11","slug":"france-fines-shein-e22m-over-consumer-and-environmental-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/30208\/","title":{"rendered":"France Fines Shein \u20ac22M Over Consumer and Environmental Violations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPARIS \u2013 France<\/a>\u2018s consumer watchdog revealed Wednesday that it had hit Shein<\/a> with fines totaling 22 million euros related to consumer information requirements, environmental disclosures and the presentation of online return rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Chinese-founded, Singapore-based ultra-fast-fashion giant framed the fines as unfair and said it will appeal, even as it faces mounting scrutiny from regulators across Europe.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe dispute these findings and consider the fines manifestly disproportionate,\u201d the company said in a statement to WWD. \u201cThroughout this process, there has never been any doubt about the fairness of transactions on our platform, or the quality and safety of the products and services offered. Not one instance of consumer harm has been established.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company said the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, or DGCCRF, is relying on an outdated interpretation of how modern e-commerce platforms operate.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe largest of the two fines, amounting to 16.7 million euros, hinges on what the DGCCRF said was a lack of information in confirmation emails, which failed to include legally required details such as product pricing, delivery times and seller information.<\/p>\n

\n\tShein<\/a> said that all of this information was available through customers\u2019 online accounts and updated in real time through its app and website.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe DGCCRF has applied a 16.7 million euro fine on the grounds that information was not reproduced in a confirmation email, based on an excessively rigid and clearly outmoded interpretation of how customers access order information on modern digital platforms,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe company also framed this fine as \u201carbitrary\u201d and based on a number of emails sent during a time period.<\/p>\n

\n\tA second penalty of 5.7 million euros relates to the presentation of the distinction between France<\/a>\u2019s withdrawal rights and Shein\u2019s own return policy, as well as the temporary absence of environmental information due to what the company described as a technical fault that had already been corrected by the company on its own.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe scale of these sanctions is difficult to reconcile with the facts,\u201d the statement said. \u201cTaken together, it gives the impression of a penalty in search of a justification.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCommerce Minister Serge Papin said the sanctions are part of larger concerns about \u201cunfair competition\u201d from platforms that fail to respect the same rules as domestic retailers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShein has been fined 22 million euros in France today,\u201d he said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe fraud squad is penalizing serious breaches by retailers: failure to respect the right of withdrawal, failure to provide mandatory information for consumers, and lack of transparency regarding the environmental impact of products,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat the fines are sanctioning \u201cis not individual errors but a model\u2026of unfair competition,\u201d he said. The platforms \u201cskip compliance with our rules and consumer protection while our retailers play by the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSince the discovery of child pornography dolls on Shein, we have decided not to let these platforms off the hook and we will continue until they completely change their practices or abandon our market,\u201d Papin added.<\/p>\n

\n\tWednesday\u2019s fines are the latest imposed against Shein in the country.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast July, the company agreed to pay 40 million euros in penalties following an investigation into allegedly misleading promotions and environmental claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn September 2025, France\u2019s data-protection watchdog, the CNIL, imposed a record 150-million-euro fine over violations of cookie-consent rules, which is under appeal.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Wednesday\u2019s fines, French authorities have now imposed more than 210 million euros in penalties against the retailer in roughly a year.<\/p>\n

\n\tShein has also faced scrutiny over products sold by third-party merchants on its marketplace. French authorities previously investigated listings that included prohibited items ranging from handguns to so-called child-like sex dolls.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe French government has taken aim at Shein from various vantage points, including an attempt to temporarily suspend Shein\u2019s French operations last year after the platform opened its first physical retail presence in France through a partnership with Paris department store BHV.<\/p>\n

\n\tA court rejected that request on the grounds that a shutdown would be disproportionate but ordered the company to suspend sales of certain adult products unless stronger age-verification systems were introduced.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrench authorities have also implemented a 2-euro-per-product category parcel tax to curb the growth of Shein and other ultra-low-cost Chinese retailers such as AliExpress, Temu<\/a> and Wish, in a bid to slow the import of goods into the country.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe French pressure comes as the European Union<\/a> has intensified its efforts to rein in the explosive growth of Chinese-founded online marketplaces.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn March, the EU agreed to impose a 3-euro tax on all parcels under 150 euros entering the bloc, in an attempt to curb the growing dominance of Chinese e-commerce platforms. In 2025, 5.8 billion small packages were delivered across the European Union<\/a>, 97 percent of them from China, compared to 1.4 billion in 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat fee will go into effect on July 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2013 France\u2018s consumer watchdog revealed Wednesday that it had hit Shein with fines totaling 22 million euros…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[430,5,4519,8824,8825],"class_list":["post-30208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-european-union","tag-france","tag-regulations","tag-shein","tag-temu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}