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

Doesn’t Temu direct ship to the customer? What if they ship in plain unmarked packaging and keep changing the address of the sender? Is the EU customs peeps just going to start inspecting every single package from China looking for items from Temu? That sounds like a logistical nightmare. This sounds like old school thinking where you can stop whole containers full of stuff from a single supplier.

At some point it's a diplomatic incident and will affect EU-Chinese relationships. Even the Chinese government doesn't want to fuck it up for all Chinese companies just because one of them feels like the rules don't apply to them. It's not like the only goods flowing from China to the EU are cheap trash.

Smuggling isn't a great business model for legitimate companies.

The money has to move from the EU to Temu/Pinduoduo coffers at some point.

What logistic company will ship plain unmarked packages? They simply wouldn't be delivered at all.

> Is the EU customs peeps just going to start inspecting every single package from China looking for items from Temu?

They might, why not. It would be unwise to pick a fight like this for any company.

Temu has EU warehouses they appear to ship from: all return addresses I've seen are EU addresses.

Say they carry on.... How does EU actually stop people ordering from their website and getting items posted to their house?

Maybe going for the money. Forbit EU banks from transferring funds to known Temu accounts.

They'll put them on naughty list that will be enforced by financial institutions, i.e. it will be an infraction for credit card operators to process such a payment. Financial operators have well oiled compliance facilities and the payment won't clear. If Temu won't get the money, they won't ship the parcel. And if they won't ship, then there will be a bit less carcinogens in EU. Good stuff.

Ordering ISPs to DNS block temu would probably be easier and effective enough.

Or maybe getting google and apple to make the app not available in the EU.

There are still borders and customs inspections, that's how.

Just in a poxy country like the UK it's millions of parcels a day delivered across multiple ports mostly inside containers.... It's simply not feasible to check it all, it would cost a ton of money to have enough checkers and not slow down deliveries.

That's a failure of the state to control its borders.

> it would cost a ton of money

That's why the EU is imposing a €3 fixed customs duty per item (and later another €2 handling fee) effective July 1 (should have been much sooner in my opinion) for small packages (under €150), in addition to the VAT.

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.

Just to be clear, you're so desperate to disagree with me or be contrary that you're saying that people need to be convicted by a court twice for the same crime for real justice to be properly served?

They cetainly get to argue before two sets of judges. Otherwise it's not justice.

I wanted to make clear that press release is not a valid substitute for a court order. And it's OK to publish one before the final instance issues it's verdict.