Journalists’ brief – “Europe for Sale: How Marketplaces Are Changing Our Society?”

At the closing session of the conference entitled “Europe for Sale: How Marketplaces Are Changing Our Society?”, European stakeholders delivered a stark warning: the EU is facing an unprecedented surge of illegal and unsafe products entering its territory through non-EU major online marketplaces, and urgent coordinated action is needed.

Unprecedented urgency and mobilisation

Speakers highlighted a “moment of urgency”, noting that mobilisation had reached levels never seen before. In France, not only had the government taken strong action, but more than 12 industry federations and over 100 brands had initiated legal proceedings against certain platforms.

At the CESE, representatives of labour groups, businesses, consumers and environmental organisations are jointly calling for immediate measures to halt illegal imports and restore a level playing field.

An explosion in volume

The scale of the problem has become overwhelming. Six billion products from non-EU marketplaces are expected to enter the EU next year. In Finland, 98% of small parcels originate from China. Compliance levels are alarming: in France, checks revealed that 80% of Shein products tested over a 24-hour period were non-compliant, while in Denmark half of the tested items were deemed dangerous.

A shared European challenge

Participants agreed: this was not a national issue, but a common European challenge. All Member States faced the same systemic risks and were converging on similar proposals. There was no single fix – but a toolbox of measures already existed and could be expanded.

Short-term solutions: customs reform first

The main short-term actions identified focus on EU customs reform, including:

• Eliminating the de minimis threshold, which currently allows millions of low-value parcels to bypass controls.
• Introducing an EU-wide handling fee to fund inspections.

Speakers stressed the need to strengthen the external borders of the EU, not those of individual Member States, to avoid forum shopping and regulatory loopholes.

Medium-term solutions: Enforcement, cooperation, responsibility

Longer-term measures emphasised the need for stronger enforcement and better coordination:

• Increased resources and cooperation between customs and market-surveillance authorities across the EU.
• Engagement with Chinese authorities, including working towards pre-export compliance checks, despite the practical challenges entailed.
• Establishing a responsible economic operator in the EU for every product sold on the European market.
• Strengthening marketplace obligations regarding seller verification, traceability and monitoring.
• Addressing the systemic risk posed by hyperscale platforms through centralised investigations by the European Commission and potential new sanctioning powers by revising the Digital Services Act (DSA) and/or the Consumer protection cooperation (CPC) Regulation.

A clear message

The conference concluded with a unified call: Europe must act now to protect consumers, safeguard fair competition, and prevent the internal market from being undermined by unregulated global platforms operating at massive scale.