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“Because marketplaces are not policing the products all the time, you can find look-alikes or even the same products just being sold under a different name again, very briefly after they’ve been taken down,” said Sylvia Maurer, director of advocacy coordination at European consumer organization BEUC.

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Shein, popular with young and lower-income consumers for its ultra-affordable fashion, showcases around 10 million individual items on its website, with the vast majority from third-party vendors rather than its own brand clothes, estimates New York-based e-commerce analyst Juozas Kaziukenas.

“It’s just a massive, massive catalog from all sorts of different manufacturers and sellers, and things you will find are things no person at Shein has manually reviewed to be on the site — it’s just on the site,” said Kaziukenas.

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No one to hold accountable

Marketplaces, as intermediaries, are not liable for the products they sell as they are not the “deemed importer” under European Union law, said Maurer. Her organization is among those pushing for this to change, in the EU’s upcoming customs reform.

Many foreign suppliers get away with selling on platforms with minimal oversight and no EU-based entity, said Gabriela da Costa, partner at law firm K&L Gates in London.

“This leaves the authorities with no one in the Union to hold accountable, compounded by the practical and resource difficulties of enforcing against massive volumes,” she added.

French authorities are investigating online marketplaces Shein, Temu, AliExpress, and Wish for alleged rule breaches that include minors being able to access pornographic content via their marketplaces, the Paris prosecutor said on Tuesday.

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Paris, the global fashion capital, is also increasingly frustrated with platforms selling counterfeit handbags or cosmetics.

“There are, in this massive flow of small parcels inundating our cities and our villages, counterfeit products, unhealthy products, and illicit products,” France’s Foreign Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, said in a radio interview.

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