Comment by gib444
6 hours ago
> Temu has until 28 August 2026 to submit an action plan to the Commission, as required by Article 75 of the DSA. The plan must set out measures to remedy the breach of its risk-assessment obligations. The European Board for Digital Services will have one month from receipt of the plan to issue its opinion. The Commission will then have a further month to adopt its final decision and set a reasonable period for implementation.
> Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments.
So they're just threatening a fine at this stage? It's not clear to me
Since this is under the "Next Steps" section, it's pretty clear to me that the €200M fine is a fixed one-time fine that was issued now, but further, repeated fines ("periodic") will be issued if the hazard is not removed.
No, it's a fine, but the fine doesn't absolve you from fixing it too so it stops. You have this delay to submit a plan for how and on what timeline you will fix it. If you don't do it, or take too long, we will keep fining you, increasingly.
An exemple what how in the old microsoft case they ended up puttin a daily fine for non compliance until microsoft balked back and fixed it (after they tried to act tough and pretended to ignore them).
The end goal ultimately is to get it fixed.
How do they enforce a fine on a Chinese company? What if temu says "up yours"?
I visited Temu from Sweden and clicked on the terms of use, this is the first line:
1.1 These Terms are between you and Whaleco Technology Limited, an Irish company.
you won't be able to sell in the EU market anymore
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It's actually both: they handed one-time fine for past behaviour (about 200 M€, not final, can and most likely will be appealed and paid in like 10 years or so; cf. Apple tax breaks in Ireland); and threatening more fines if they don't play along in the future. One of the kinds of punishment that Commision can slap (subject to court oversight, ofc) is „daily fines”, which is a fine that accumulates with constant daily rate up to the date the company complies, or some pre-set maximum, which usually calculates to several months, and need to be reissued afterwards (which is an opportunity to double the daily amount, and again, can be appealed to a court).
> not final, can and most likely will be appealed and paid in like 10 years
But the EU got some headlines and people believed they came down with an iron first so that's really the most important thing here
In my world finest are served when they're actually paid, not threatened
In my world people are innocent until proven guilty before a court of law, twice. Yes, even business people. Executive branch shouldn't be able to just bankrupt a company and tell the owners to go through the courts to maybe recover the money in 10 years, if they're innocent after all.
There were several such cases in my country before we joined EU, most high profile one was against Optimus SA (predecessor to CD Projekt), where they just took people's money, without cause as they courts later found. Never again.
So the middle ground is, Temu can choose to play hardball all the way to ECJ, but if they are wrong (they are and they know it), the cost will be substantial (200 M€ + interest + daily fines + interest). So I think they'll enter talks, pay 200 M€ and pinky promise to delist offending items.
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