Summary

  • On 26 October, the European Commission accepted Temu's plan to repair the risk assessment that led to a €200 million Digital Services Act fine in May.
  • The European Board for Digital Services had called the proposed changes only partly adequate and short on detail. The Commission says it clarified requirements; Temu has four months to implement the plan, followed by an independent audit.

Brussels has marked Temu's homework “accepted”, with an awkward note in the margin. The Commission's account of its 26 October decision says the European Board for Digital Services considered the marketplace's proposed repair only partially adequate. The board could not fully assess whether it addressed the infringement because the detail was insufficient. The Commission accepted the plan after clarifying key requirements and says it will watch precisely the parts the board found underexplained.

The board is an advisory body made up of national Digital Services Coordinators, chaired by the Commission. Its 24 September opinion and the Commission's later acceptance are separate acts. The public announcement describes the Commission's clarification, but gives neither the full plan nor the text of that clarification. Readers can see the assignment and the marking schedule; the working pages sit elsewhere.

Temu's five tasks are concrete enough to follow. It must base its risk assessment on current information about its own service, measure whether safeguards reduce the spread of illegal listings, examine weaknesses in proactive moderation, test how recommendations may amplify those listings, and examine how sellers or others could manipulate platform features. The moderation review reaches from platform rules and automated detection to human review, feedback and staffing. A dashboard filled with counts would be easy. Showing that the counts actually track shoppers' exposure is the harder job.

That distinction goes back to the Commission's May finding. It fined Temu €200 million after finding its 2024 assessment relied on general e-commerce information rather than evidence specific to Temu. The regulator said the assessment underestimated exposure to illegal goods and missed how recommendation systems and affiliated influencers could spread them. A mystery-shopping exercise found safety problems among selected chargers and baby toys. The finding concerned the assessment Temu had filed and the tested products; the Commission did not publish a marketplace-wide defect rate.

There are three clocks. The company has four months to implement the plan. An interim assessment must examine a six-month period ending 30 November 2026; that is the end of the evidence window. An outside independent audit follows, with its report due to the Commission within four months of implementation. If the auditor recommends changes, Temu then has one month to report how it is carrying them out. These stages appear in the Commission's detailed notice, which sits within the DSA's risk-assessment framework.

The story now moves from an approved plan to measurements of a live marketplace. The Commission has singled out the board's unanswered questions for closer supervision. The auditor will get a turn after implementation. The interesting document is no longer the stamped cover sheet; it is the evidence that can survive both desks.

Official sources