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EU commissioner shocked by dangers of some goods sold by Shein and Temu
- greatgib 1y agoA good strawman argument like politician like it before trying to push some new shitty regulations. It's not like local business were not already selling wrong and counterfeiting products.
- belter 1y agoInnocent question...Are those goods also not available via Amazon?
- belter 1y agoSo answer is yes, what makes the downvotes even more suspicious https://www.reddit.com/r/FrugalFemaleFashion/comments/1gsy4hx/i_found_exactly_the_same_items_on_shein_and_amazon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FrugalFemaleFashion/comments/1gsy4h...
- alwa 1y ago[flagged]
- er4hn 1y agoNo, it's so much worse than anyone could have imagined. For example: "kids’ shorts with drawstrings longer than regulation length, which cause a trip hazard."
- userbinator 1y agoIndeed. Judging by the voting patterns here, there's a nontrivial faction that's become addicted to Big Government.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- freeone3000 1y agoYes, a choking hazard in a baby toy is pretty bad.
- golli 1y agoAdditionally it's probably a rule that was written in blood and it also isn't an obvious feature that someone would know about and base their purchase decision on.
- somenameforme 1y agoI'm fairly certain just about every single half decent parent is completely obsessed with anything that might even possibly be a choking hazard. Kids are surprisingly strong and capable of completely chimping things to shreds. If there's choking zone beads on a toy, it's not getting bought, regardless of whether or not if they have 'ventilation holes' in them.
- alwa 1y agoFair, fair. I'm over-accustomed to markets where standards and expectations are tilted far in the "caveat emptor" direction—where people are still working on big things like "don't use poison to make your turmeric look yellower." I think what made me react (with fondness, not criticism, to be clear) was the framing: casually noting the departure from the technical standard specifically regulating "hole diameter adequate for sufficient airflow upon accidental swallowing in baby-facing bead-related amusement products" or what have you. Not only have they thought about that very specific aspect of a choking hazard, but they've figured out what the right parameters are, published them, and hold manufacturers to them—and that specific dimension of the problem is common enough knowledge that a Guardian journalist just tosses it off casually for a general audience.
- sva_ 1y agoI've noticed that there's currently some kind of manufacturing consent going on in the EU, presumably preparing the population for, which I claim, plans to make it very difficult for European consumers to order from China directly. Disclaimer: I gladly buy from local EU businesses, but not if they're just a middleman charging an unreasonable fee for importing Chinese-made products.
- seec 1y agoThe sad truth is that the majority of common products are like this and the markup is for covering the insane amount of bullshit job to run the bureaucracy enabling this. Which is exactly why they are trying to close the "loophole", if the poor people can go directly to the source, big government can't put its hand in every single process to tax it in order to pay for all the bullshit. The industry is complicit because they get to make more profit this way, the whole system is corrupted anyway. As for the things that are made in the EU, they are barely affordable for the middle class already, precisely because there is very little value creation and it's get taxed to the ground. The ones suffering the most are the poor, who are often the ones actually working to create said value, preventing access to those cheap goods is just another way to force them to stay poor.
- seydor 1y agoi d be surprised if this wasn't some "influence" coming from the US administration for my part i am ordering lots of trinkets that i might need, assuming that Temu will be banned soon
- userbinator 1y agoThe EU and US have historically been very much opposites, and now increasingly more so, when it comes to things like this.
- cjbgkagh 1y agoThe US is gearing up for a China conflict, there is a split between the prep for war with China now or sort out Iran first and then prep for war with China. It’s currently most obvious in the MAGA split but the dems are captured as well. AOC is signaling she’ll play ball in what I assume is prep for a presidential run. Like most voters I’m anti-war but people tend not to get what they vote for in important matters like that. The US will not permit the EU to sit on the sidelines.
- ozim 1y agoOh yeah the invisible hand of market that works after hundreds of children die should cover for that /s
- DoctorOetker 1y agobecause they die at a much lower rate when exactly the same trash is bought from local outfits importing them from China for a hefty fee? /s
- Kenji 1y ago[dead]
- kinow 1y agoI buy some arts materials from China, but only simple things that I cannot find in EU or tyat are just the same product re-sold a lot more expensive here. I'd be glad to buy in EU if that's cheaper. I still buy EU arts materials that are more expensive than Chinese products, but that are (at least supposedly) better tested for toxicity. I noticed in the past year or two art stores like Casa Piera/Arte Miranda have had more products like watercolor paper and paints from China. I hope new regulations will make sure these are compliant with EY regulations, without raising the price to consumer too much.
- mschuster91 1y agoThe key thing is: Europe has product standards (and not just on safety), sometimes very strict ones. We have democratically agreed upon these, often enough only as a response to the industry being unable or unwilling (cough Apple and USB-C) to do the right thing on its own. In addition, we have warranty requirements (a minimum of two years), minimum wage and workplace safety regulations. Now Temu, Shein, lots of the shops on Alibaba, Amazon and eBay... they all push stuff into Europe that violates these standards and can be sold cheaper as a result. That is bad on three sides: First, for the dangerous stuff (such as the toys with choking hazards, lead paint or the "chinesium" Big Clive routinely pulls out of shady eBay sales), that's directly endangering our people and/or our environment. And second, all the stuff made and imported that violates requirements is undercutting our domestic production and economy who does have to follow the regulations or otherwise it gets fined. And finally: a lot of the stuff particularly on Temu and Shein is outright garbage, falling apart after a few uses - and then it ends in our landfills and waste disposals. A horrible waste from an environment perspective, especially given that a lot of the junk comes in via air freight of all things!
- palata 1y ago> they all push stuff into Europe that violates these standards and can be sold cheaper as a result. I understand that and I agree that it should be regulated. But on the other hand, I can order 50 zippers on Temu for 2$, and if I go to a local store they sell one for 10$. I bought both, and they are exactly the same. So one zipper on Temu costs 4 cents, versus 10$ in a local store. That's 250x more expensive. Doesn't seem reasonable.
- mschuster91 1y ago> I bought both, and they are exactly the same. They are not. With the one you buy at your local store, you get the two years warranty, and should the thing contain, say, lead paint you can hold the seller accountable. Good luck doing the same against Temu. In addition, you pay a markup at the physical store for stockkeeping. Yeah sure, I can order the small capacitor for some fried PLC adapter on Amazon. No doubt. But I'll need to wait about two days for shipping, whereas the local electronics store has it right now when I need it.
- EUSSR 1y ago[flagged]
- Sloowms 1y agoI think this is an artful position to hold in response to an article about imports from China to the EU.
- lousken 1y agowhat about garbage from amazon, aliexpres and others?
- pndy 1y agoThat's my question as well. If he's so concerned about this then what about other services? Polish Allegro quite recently had to add a filter on their site to sieve out all sellers from outside EEA because they flooded it. Moreover, there are physical stores that also sell this "dangerous" stuff. My friend worked in one and she complained all the time on chemical odour these items were generating.
- shivasaxena 1y agoThen your friend is free to not buy these goods she deems "dangerous". Why stop those of us who want to buy it?
- wat10000 1y agoBecause I want to be able to just buy stuff, not have to spend hours researching whether some trinket is going to poison me. I’d be ok with dangerous products being available for purchase if they’re labeled as such.
- throwawaylaptop 1y agoJust shop at higher end stores. If I want to gamble and search for an item I go to Temu. If I want good enough, I go to value based US retailers. If I want 'a bit better' I go the slightly more expensive ones known for curating their for sale items a bit. If I want quality, I go to a specialty shop and ask a sales representative for the desired quality.
- john01dav 1y agoThere's no guarantee that something is better just because it's more expensive or has marketing that says that it's better. Specialist knowledge and quite a lot of time is required to properly evaluate a product. Consider that Amazon is full of questionable products. I have also seen non-UL-listed (or listed with anyone else) phone chargers in physical stores in the united states. You can't rely on reputation either in an age of enshittification.
- fooker 1y agoThe issue is the complete lack of enforceability. A regulator can tell temu/shein/amazon/etc to take down the seller, or even the brand and the next day two new ones prop up selling the product from the same factory. To my knowledge, no one has solved this yet. Maybe a good use of AI? Unfortunately not monetizable really.
- weinzierl 1y ago"[..] next day two new ones prop up selling the product from the same factory." So you mean basically like Amazon?
- liotier 1y ago> A regulator can tell temu/shein/amazon/etc to take down the seller, or even the brand and the next day two new ones prop up selling the product from the same factory. If that game remains afoot for too long, the buck stops at the distributor - who can't hide from the EU behind ever-shifting randomly generated brands.
- userbinator 1y ago[flagged]
- wat10000 1y agoYes, I do indeed remember the days of leaded gasoline and “smoking or non-smoking?” I much prefer the way things are now, thankyouverymuch.
- _zoltan_ 1y agoyour reply has nothing to do with the comment you thought you are replying to.
- wat10000 1y agoThey wanted to go back to the good old days when the government didn’t try to protect you from yourself and your safety was your own responsibility. My reply has everything to do with that.
- userbinator 1y agoSome things have gotten better, some things have gotten worse... much worse. Incidentally, dental floss is also affected by this stupid regulation treadmill. The new PFAS-free stuff is absolute shit. Maybe it's less harmful in some way according to the politicised "studies", but I just don't give a fuck anymore when all they're doing is making our quality of life worse.
- wat10000 1y agoOh, well, I guess more cancer is bad, but if it's annoying you when you floss....
- boznz 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dijit 1y agoI only need to watch a handful of bigclive teardown videos of cheap USB-C chargers to understand that.. actually... I hope they do. Otherwise more peoples houses will be burning down while people sleep inside them, or going to hospital with terrible electrical burns, or worse.
- j45 1y agoSurprised it shocking. Cheaper isn't always safer.
- jabjq 1y ago[flagged]
- Bluestein 1y ago[flagged]
- woodpanel 1y agoI'm not a friend of EU regulators in general, but complaining about Chinese imports is an easy PR-win. If a country can compe up with something like "Gutter Oil" being a thing, procured by mom-and-pops, sold to restaurants nearby, which then shove it down the throats of their customers nearby, there must be such little accountability and remorse from the producer side in general in the PRC that putting more distance between vendors and customers can only result in more toxins. Europeans have no idea about the brazenness there.
- midtv 1y agotbh not surprised
- midtvu 1y agotbh not surprised, shien and temu got shady s** going on
- edg5000 1y ago"(...) kids’ shorts with drawstrings longer than regulation length (...)" We really overrregulate things here in the EU. It was a great run, we've had access to great Chinese stuff for a while now. Maybe around 2007-ish the direct-to-consumer imports started. It has really helped me to acquire tools and eletrical components cheaply, where no other supplier was able to offer it at a good price or at all. Hopefuly the EU will fail to keep this in check so that the party can continue.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- arp242 1y agoThat quote does continue with "which cause a trip hazard". I have no idea what the trip hazard on that is, or how many children tripped on these types of strings. Do you? It seems to me that any opinion without this information is not an informed opinion. Additionally, pretty much all of the other examples seem far more serious. Quoting only that one bit is not a fair representation of the article on that account either. Additionally additionally, some corporations not following the regulations is just unfair competition. Not hard to be cheaper than everyone else if you decide to dump slop with toxic chemicals. That some of the regulations might be bad is somewhat besides the point here. There is a democratic process for changing them if you don't like them.
- edg5000 1y agoWe all want safe products. Regulating products is a bit like the war on drugs. Drugs are bad, so you criminalize it. Seems logical, right? In reality, we have many case studies where this has actually worsened the situation, as it pushes the drugs into the underworld. This is how regulation can be counter-intuitive. I'm so cynical and passionate about this overregulation because I've had to deal with it myself in aviation and medical. When you read the regulations, everything makes sense. It basically says: "reduce risk". In reality, companies spend (in my experience) insane amounts of resources on paperwork to prove they are safe, which is completely detached from reality. It's a paper excercise. It's bureaucratic bloat that slipped in over the years. It seems to make sense at the surface, but actually is counterproductive. Why? Any sane business wants to minimize risks at all costs. Those who don't, will at best get a terrible reputation. There should be regulation of course, just no overregulation. It's like bloated code. There should be code of couse, just no needless abstractions as it just drags everything down. It's just that I'm seeing a pattern where we are cynical towards other countries and are simply too self-congratulating with our own regulatory situation. As a continent/union we're showing signs being a bad sport. Instead of saying how bad everybody else is, why not make good stuff ourselves instead? We can't compete because our energy is insanely expensive. Zoning and compliance get in the way of business. Lack of raw resource acquisition (we have to import raw materials). High taxes. Labour shortages, overly strong unions. All the ugly things we'd rather not talk about, the "boring" problems that have to be adresses one by one. We're inefficient and cannot compete on many things globally and have to rely on imports. That inefficiency needs to be adressed!
- edg5000 1y ago[flagged]
- anthk 1y agoEnjoy your cancer at 50's them. Or a blindless because of alcohol adulteration as it happened in Spain and Austria: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Austrian_diethylene_glycol_wine_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Austrian_diethylene_gly... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Methanol_Poisonings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Methanol_Poisonings
- edg5000 1y agoI'm not saying regulation is bad, but overregulation is. It's counter intutive. See my reaction to arp242 for better articulated arguments :)
- ta20240528 1y agoOver-regulation being "anything you don't like" ? Or do you have objective criteria - other than "gets in the way of making money"? Genuinely curious.
- Topfi 1y ago> With IT they are trying to bully these US companies all the time. Correct me if I got this wrong but aren’t the US States with the strongest (and incidentally most EU like) data privacy regulations the very States where said US companies have most of their operations? Why is that, is California trying to bully Californian enterprise?
- justlikereddit 1y ago[flagged]
- Topfi 1y agoIs there a reason why the toxic chemicals, choking hazards or lack of UV filter on sunglasses are intentionally ignored? Also, could there perhaps be a reason for the length being regulated or do you think they just do that cause they got nothing better to do? Maybe the article even mentions the reason in the same sentence.
- anthk 1y agoRead about the effects of the Thhalioamide, or the wine scandal in Germany/Austria (can't remember), and then you'll know why regulations are needed.
- iamflimflam1 1y agoHe should really take a look at the crap available on Amazon - much of which is just people reselling Chinese imports. I personally buy a lot of electronics from AliExpress. But I have enough experience and knowledge to know what not to buy. Some of the electronics available are downright dangerous - particularly super cheap USB chargers. We have regulations and standards for a reason.
- tremon 1y agoI have enough experience and knowledge to know what not to buy What kind of experience do you mean here? Do you go by brand name, or specific clues in product images? Because I have a hard time trusting the product descriptions on these massive online marketplaces (Amazon included).
- iamflimflam1 1y agoI’ve got a background in electronics. Tear downs on YouTube are invaluable. Unless I’m explicitly buying something to take it apart I avoid anything mains powered. You can replace the plugs and cables with compliant ones. And you can fix the lack of proper earthing. But who knows what other problems there are. For household items, I do tend to stick to known brands and would probably avoid places like Amazon. In the U.K. we have various high street shops such as John Lewis that do have reputations to maintain. I would also avoid anything that has large lithium batteries. Some basic heuristics can go a long way. Does a £2 USB-C charger that claims to do 200W make sense? Probably not…
- mawadev 1y agoAre we finally witnessing the end of dropshipping?
- thefz 1y agoAKA cheap crap is cheap crap.
- hyperman1 1y agoI may be a bit jaded here, but: $politician is shocked by $problemKnownForDecades. These people's outside face is more an opera actor than a real person. So the actual message is probably: Some political faction has decided to push for legislation and needs to sell it to the public. Combined with the USA's preparation for war on China, the Russia invasion in Ukraine, and the Trump trade war: It seems the EU is aligning itself with the USA againts China, and has to sell this to an anti-Trump citizenship
- saubeidl 1y agoIt sure would help if Trump wasn't constantly attacking our way of life.
- Frieren 1y ago> Some political faction has decided to push for legislation and needs to sell it to the public. Yes. Chinese direct sales have no taxes (as they divide orders to below the taxable amount). So, taxes are coming to Chinese goods and this is the start of that process. It makes sense to remove that loophole that gives advantage to foreign made products over local ones. So, the goal seems a good one.
- hyperman1 1y agoWhile the long term goal seems a good one, we don't yet know what exactly they want, and politicians are very good at seeming. Meanwhile, in the current context, I'd like to see Europe taking a more ambiguous position: Invite all of the non USA first world to increase trade and strengthen stability, giving an alternative to Trump. This would also mean a more ambigous signalling to China. After the NATO budget increase (which for abbig part means buying USA weapons), this kind of action is Vasal Europe crawling back to the safe bosom of King USA.
- redeeman 1y agothose things destined for the EU does, where both aliexpress, temu etc declare and prepay at the EU import one stop shop.
- DrNosferatu 1y agoA try at a Solution: The EU should enforce much larger warranties than the current 2 years. The higher the price, the longer the required warranty: A 1500€ electric scooter should have, say, 7 years warranty. A car, 10 years - after that date, the battery interface becomes open source hardware for easy OEM replacement. Results: + Sweatshops exploiting people in miserable conditions are no longer profitable + Protects the environment via resource utilization reduction + The EU can compete in manufacturing - via quality - with competitors that mostly offer cheap labor.
- esperent 1y agoI generally like the idea of stronger warranties but it's not always reasonable to relate them to cost. For example batteries: they last for a specific number of uses, and it doesn't matter how expensive they are. It would also stifle innovation. Foldable phones, or any new technology, always starts out expensive and less durable. There's no way they could give a longer warranty on a foldable phone than on a cheap normal phone. Note, I'm not really a fan of foldable phones but it's the best example I could think of right now. You can replace it with almost any new technology.
- DrNosferatu 1y agoThere can be exemptions to foster innovation - Ferrari style.
- throwaway_20357 1y agoI'm glad for any initiative that leads to less crap reaching the markets that is either dangerous or has a shelf life of a few months before breaking down. The EU as a whole will become even less competitive if we don't re-gain some level of quality awareness and place quality at the center of the things we consume and produce. This should not be understood as anti-China but should apply to all products on the EU market. China has some well-respected quality-conscious consumer brands (e.g. Hifiman, Fenix Lights, DJI, Anker, Govee...) but it seems a lot of smaller companies there put easy revenue over any concerns for quality.
- omnee 1y agoI want to emphasise your latter point - I have a Lenovo work laptop, Fenix head torches and various other high quality Chinese products. Any company selling into the EU needs to meet the QC and regulatory requirements, and many well known Chinese brands already do so, and so their products naturally sell at a premium to the cheapest options. A little more thought in purchasing by buyers would go a long way in helping the commissions efforts to reduce harmful goods.
- tim333 1y agoRegulation done well could help the good Chinese companies so they don't get undercut and tarnished by the cheap ones. There's been a problem in London with cheap no brand Chinese bicycle batteries catching fire. Quite a few people dead.
- amai 1y agohttps://youtu.be/qIEM68POJrs https://youtu.be/qIEM68POJrs
- elizabetht2 1y ago[dead]
- elizabetht2 1y ago[dead]
- Shypangz 1y agoA lot of people worry about product safety these days. You might find it helpful to keep an eye on reviews with HiFiveStar to spot any issues early. It made tracking concerns much easier for me.