Shein
Fast-fashion marketplace, under an open proceeding into illegal products and addictive design.
- Tier
- VLOP — very large online platform
- Provider
- Infinite Styles Services Co, Ltd
- Sector
- Marketplace
- Designated
- 26 April 2024
- Obligations from
- 26 August 2024
- EU users at designation
- 108 million
- Formal proceedings
- 1
- Court challenges
- None
Designated 26 April 2024 on 108 million average monthly active recipients in the Union.
The Commission opened proceedings on 17 February 2026 covering the sale of illegal products including potential child sexual abuse material, addictive design features, and the transparency of recommender systems.
Where Shein sits in the tier
Designation is not a ranking, and the obligations do not scale with size: the smallest designated service carries exactly the same duties in Articles 33 to 43 as the largest.
Marketplace duties stack underneath the designated tier
A platform that lets consumers conclude distance contracts with traders carries Section 4 of Chapter III on top of everything designation adds. Article 30 is a know-your-business-customer rule: before a trader can offer anything, the marketplace must collect name, contact details, payment account, and trade register information, and make best efforts to assess whether that information is reliable and complete.
Article 31 requires compliance by design — the interface must be built so traders can actually meet their own legal obligations. Article 32 is the right to information: where the provider learns an illegal product was offered, it must tell affected consumers who bought it in the preceding six months, identify the trader, and set out the means of redress.
This is where enforcement against marketplaces has concentrated. Every marketplace proceeding opened to date pairs an allegation about illegal products with an allegation about the systems meant to keep them off the service.
- Article 30
- Trader traceability, with a Commission-run database of trader information under Article 32(3).
- Article 28
- Protection of minors, where the marketplace is accessible to them.
Formal proceedings
Illegal products, addictive design and recommender transparency
OpenOpened 17 February 2026
- ·Sale of illegal products, including potential child sexual abuse material
- ·Addictive design features
- ·Recommender system transparency
Shein timeline
- 26 April 2024 Designated a VLOP by Commission decision.
- 26 August 2024 Articles 33 to 43 begin to apply, four months after notification.
- 17 February 2026 Formal proceedings opened.
What Shein has to do
Designation applies the asymmetric obligations in Articles 33 to 43. They are the same for every designated service, read against a platform surface. Terms used on this page are collected in the glossary.
- Article 34 Systemic risk assessment
- Article 35 Mitigation of risks
- Article 37 Independent audit
- Article 38 Recommender systems without profiling
- Article 39 Advertising repository
- Article 40 Data access for the Commission and vetted researchers
- Article 41 Internal compliance function
- Article 42 Transparency reporting
- Article 43 Supervisory fee
Related designations
Other marketplace services in the tier: Amazon Store, AliExpress, Temu, Zalando, Google Shopping.