BRUSSELS — The European Commission on Thursday slapped Chinese e-commerce giant Temu with a €200 million fine for failing to check its service for illegal products sold in Europe.

Temu failed to properly assess the risks of illegal products circulating on its platform in an annual review, as is required under EU law. As a result, the firm underestimated how often users could find and buy illegal items like faulty electronics and hazardous baby toys, the Commission said.

The fine is the largest so far imposed under the bloc’s new platforms regulation, the Digital Services Act, after Elon Musk’s social media site X faced a €120 million fine for transparency lapses in December 2025.

EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said Temu’s infringement is “very serious” because “doing proper risk assessment of their service” is “the first step when you are entering the European market.”

The fine for Temu comes as European governments are looking to toughen up on their approach to China. Top officials are set to discuss EU-China relations at a meeting on Friday. Temu is owned by PDD Holdings, which is headquartered in Dublin.

Asked about the risks of retaliation from China, Virkkunen told journalists on Thursday: “I don’t see any risks.” The EU was merely enforcing the rules, she added.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) has been under heavy fire from Washington for months, with U.S. officials criticizing it for stifling free speech on social media platforms and unfairly targeting American tech companies. Fining Temu could help alleviate the criticism that the law is targeted at U.S. firms only.

The Commission focused its investigation into Temu on a 2024 risk assessment, the first risk assessment the firm was tasked to file under the DSA. The assessment fell “far below standards,” said a senior Commission official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. These assessments are a “cornerstone” of the DSA enforcement framework, so Temu’s infringement is “particularly serious,” the official said.

Temu’s recommender systems and promotions make the risk worse by pushing these products to consumers, the Commission said.

The Temu fine is far below the DSA’s higher threshold for fines, which is 6 percent of the company’s annual global revenue. The Commission based the fine on Temu’s revenue for 2025, which it said was €53 billion, bringing the maximum fine to roughly €2.8 billion.

A Temu spokesperson said they “note” the Commission’s decision and “are reviewing it carefully.”

Temu now has three months to file a plan on how the company will fix the issues the Commission identified. The EU executive and national authorities will then evaluate the Chinese platform’s plan before deciding on next actions.

Temu could still face further penalties as the European Commission is still investigating risks of the platform’s addictive design.