Why the EU just opened a formal probe into Shein
One of the companies best known for cranking out ultracheap goods is facing a serious investigation in Europe over concerns about illegal products and predatory business practices.
The EU’s European Commission said Tuesday that it has opened “formal proceedings” against Shein under the Digital Services Act, which sets ground rules for online services that Europeans use. In the announcement, the commission says it is targeting Shein over worries that the shopping platform is addictive by design, powered by opaque algorithms, and engages in the sale of illegal goods, including weapons and child sexual abuse material in the form of “child-like sex dolls.”
Late last year, French watchdog agency the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control flagged the Chinese online retailer to authorities after finding “sex dolls constituting child sexual abuse material” for sale along with other “pornographic content” not restricted by an age gate. “These acts fall within the scope of serious criminal offences under French law,” the regulator wrote at the time, noting that the violations could be punishable by imprisonment and a €100,000 fine under the country’s criminal code.
Based on the findings, French authorities initiated a criminal investigation into Shein over the sale and distribution of child sexual abuse material and kicked off a coordinated European investigation under the Digital Services Act. The French consumer protection agency found childlike sex dolls for sale on Chinese e-commerce site AliExpress, owned by Alibaba Group.
In a parallel investigation, French customs agents inspected 200,000 Shein packages for compliance with French laws and found that eight out of 10 products it examined potentially ran afoul of the law, including cosmetics containing banned ingredients and unsafe children’s toys.
In response, Shein said that it would restrict the sale of sex dolls and permanently ban “all seller accounts linked to illegal or non-compliant sex-doll products” on its platform. “The fight against child exploitation is non-negotiable for Shein,” Shein Executive Chairman Donald Tang said in a statement addressing the controversy. “These were marketplace listings from third-party sellers—but I take this personally.”
Regulators catch up to fast fashion
Fast fashion retailers like Shein and Temu, which ship lightning fast from China and offer hundreds of thousands of designs, have exploded in recent years. Regulators are only beginning to catch up to the controversial business model, which has seen Shein sprint toward $2 billion in revenue in 2025, in spite of the company’s many headwinds.
The online shopping frenzy over trendy, ultracheap clothes took off during the pandemic and got a massive boost from TikTok, where Gen Z influencers reveal and review their clothing shipments in haul videos.
Shein and other fast fashion retailers rely on a “test and repeat” model that throws many thousands of clothing designs at the wall to see what sticks, producing small batches of 50 to 100 items. Designs that flop are swiftly retired and if a design takes off, its production scales up to meet demand.
While the fast fashion trend keeps TikTok creators well-stocked with fresh content, the phenomenon’s major players have faced an array of serious concerns during their rise. The fast fashion world’s quick cycles and frequent returns create vast amounts of waste destined for the landfill, not to mention the emissions consequences of shipping so many small packages around the globe on short notice.
Beyond the steep environmental price of cheap goods, investigations have found that the laborers constantly sewing new designs for Shein and its ilk often work grueling shifts in difficult conditions—and sometimes those workers aren’t even old enough to legally be there.
Shein also got wrapped up in Trump’s tariff wars last year, when the president ended the “de minimis” loophole that made it possible for Chinese companies to ship small, low-value packages into the U.S. without paying tariffs and extra duties. EU finance ministers followed suit late last year, announcing that Europe would begin to impose customs duties on low value packages shipped into Europe some time in 2026.