The Paris Court of Appeal on Thursday rejected a government request to halt part of online retailer Shein’s operations in France for three months, upholding an earlier ruling that deemed the move disproportionate. The French government has been seeking to suspend the Chinese site since a watchdog flagged listings for illicit products, including weapons, banned medications and childlike sex dolls.
The court ruled that the suspension was not justified because Shein had already removed the products from its platform.
However, it upheld a ban on Shein reselling lawful adult pornographic products without adding age-verification filters to its site, which the retailer has acknowledged are difficult to implement effectively.
France’s consumer watchdog, the Directorate General for Competition Policy Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, in November identified listings for banned weapons and sex dolls resembling children offered for sale by third-party vendors in Shein’s marketplace. The revelations prompted the government to seek a temporary suspension of the site.
Shein responded at the time by banning all sex dolls and removing its adult products category globally.
A lower French court ruled in December that blocking Shein was "disproportionate" given the sale of the items in question had been "sporadic" and the site had since removed the listings.
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Fast fashion under fire
France has also taken online marketplaces AliExpress and Joom to court for listing childlike sex dolls for sale.
Six platforms were reported to the authorities after the Shein scandal broke, Commerce Minister Serge Papin said last November, including five singled out for selling illegal products.
In December, police arrested some 20 people across France on suspicion of buying the dolls online. Two men in the eastern city of Mulhouse have since been convicted and placed on the sex offenders register.
Meanwhile the European Commission last month opened an investigation into Shein over the sale of illegal goods and the platform’s recommendation systems, which it said it was concerned could have "addictive" features.
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Shein, founded in China in 2012 and now based in Singapore, has been under fire since it established operations in France.
It is criticised by both campaign groups and politicians for generating environmental pollution, selling goods that fail to comply with basic regulations and imposing poor working conditions in its Chinese factories.
France has proposed a law to regulate ultra-fast fashion retailers like Shein and Temu that would impose extra tax on products sold by companies with a poor environmental record. It would also ban them from advertising or offering shoppers free returns.
(with newswires)
