The EU plans to make marketplaces liable for any dangerous or illegal products sold on their platforms, according to draft documents seen by the Financial Times. Marketplaces named include Temu, Shein and Amazon.
This would be a massive change in responsibility – generally legislation has allowed marketplaces to operate as a venue with the seller responsible for product safety. The marketplace responsibility has been limited so long as they remove dangerous or illegal products as soon as they are made aware of them. If this change comes into effect it would put the onus to vet dangerous or illegal products before they are listed and sold.
One of the driving factors behind this change is the sheer volume of goods being shipped direct to the consumer from China. The report says that €4.6bn lower-value parcels entered the EU in 2024 – four times volumes seen in 2022 and 90% came from China.
In the past, goods would have been shipped in bulk to EU retailers with tax and duty paid on the bulk imports. By shipping ever increasing volumes of low-value parcels to individual consumers, that’s a lot of revenue being lost which the changes would recoup.
The net result of the draft proposal would undoubtedly increase prices to consumers for Chinese goods sold on marketplaces – the duty and VAT would have to be added at source. What’s less clear is if the marketplaces would increase their fees/margins in order to account for their increased liability, or if more stringent checks would be put in place to ensure that all products offered for sale met EU safety standards.
The changes noted by the Financial Times include:
- Changing the importer of record from the consumer to the marketplace
- Marketplace to collect the relevant duty and VAT
- Marketplace to ensure the compliance of the goods with other EU requirements
- Abolishes the exemption for goods worth less than €150 from paying duty (this would make all goods regardless of value subject to customer checks
- A new central EU customs authority to screen goods prior to shipment
- Seller to contribute to the cost of disposal of unwanted products
- Potential per packet handling fee
