Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Ordinary meeting
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IMCO European Parliament
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 4
The majority of the replies came from Germany, Belgium, France, and Italy. And largely contributors were business associations with 35% contribution, companies 25%, and public authorities. Now on the new legislative framework, I will give you four kind of points of updates. First, on the digital product passport that will be integrated in the new legislative framework. There is strong support for including compliance and safety information obligation in a digital form.
88% of the respondents agree to that. A large majority agree that online products, so products that are sold via online sales, should provide this digital compliance information. And moreover, the digital product passport should also integrate third-party certificates. That is seen as largely beneficial. There was, I would say, a pretty clear lack of consensus regarding the future of the Seamark.
Now we are going to have the digital product passport that we see as a digital container via QR code that will be attached on the product or the package. And the question is, what are we going to do with the C-Mark? Right? Because it's another kind of label. Are we going to keep it?
Are we going to integrate it in the digital product passport? And there, there was no consensus whether to keep it or not. For those that have agreed not to keep it, for example, the reasons were that the c marking is misleading because most of the products that are found breaching the safety rules, for example, they are c marked. Another point of, I would say, agreement here to not keep the sea mark would be that it is misinterpreted. Some people believe that this is a quality mark or is made in the EU, and there is also a huge confusion with the China export mark, which looks exactly the same.
So these are a point, this is a point of reflection that we take with us moving forward with the revision of the new legislative framework. Then there is the aspect of the circularity that we have tested, I would say, temperature with the stakeholders. And there, we have asked about the mandatory safety checks by the refurbishers. So these are the economic operators intervening into the product when the product is placed on the market. And there was a slight support, almost 60%, that there should be some mandatory safety check done by these economic operators.
But also requirements for the manufacturer to provide the information that enables a safe refurbishment of the product. So to enhance your clarity, there is also, we have quite, I would say, slim support, a bit above 50%. Then we go into the system of conformity assessment, notified bodies, and oversight. For the oversight of the notified bodies, there is a strong backing for enhanced commission powers to suspend or withdraw certificates and notifications for those notified bodies that perform illegal practices or deviate from their mandate and their rules, and for a mandatory assessment timeline of the notifications. So and then with respect to outsourcing the services of the notified bodies to third countries, there was a clear majority support for stricter requirements to ensure reliability of the system.
Here, we are talking about 85% of the respondents, including stronger staff expertise that they should put on the ground and to have a more limited subcontracting of the core tasks. So that's on the new legislative framework. Now I will move to the evaluation and revision of the market surveillance regulation. Here, we got a little bit less replies, 154. And also, we have carried out in parallel also the call for evidence to which we have received almost 100 contributions.
Majority, again, they were coming from Germany, Belgium, and France with the same kind of level of participation: business associations being the most active, companies, and then public authorities. So I will go quickly through the results of the evaluation. The evaluation, according to the better regulation toolbox, is assessed according to the five criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence, and EU added value. On the effectiveness, the majority of the responders perceived a very low effectiveness of the market surveillance in the EU. Only 10% believe that it is effective.
There are key gaps in import controls, 62%. When it comes to e-commerce and the enforcement capacity related to e-commerce, almost 60% consider that online products are more likely to be noncompliant, while 85% acknowledge that the authorities lack the capacity to deal with e-commerce. With respect to efficiency, a large majority acknowledged that there is no level playing field between offline and online. With respect to the relevant large majority, more than 80% believe that the system is not fit for e-commerce, again. And almost 60%, they found that the scope of the actors is insufficient.
And that applies also to the scope of application for the authorised representative related to responsibilities and their role. As the criteria for EU added value, there is almost 100% consensus that EU level action should remain. For the revision part of the market surveillance regulation, here, there is a high consensus that there is a need for a key reform, such as an EU-based responsible economic operator, a stronger cooperation with the EU Customs Authority, and a greater interoperability of the digital system. With respect to digitalization, there is a clear demand to improve the IT tools that we have to use AI-based solutions such as web crawlers, alongside the use of the DPP for sharing the data. And last but not least, there was a strong call for higher EU-level governance.
And to that extent, almost 60% agreed that there should be a complementary role to the national authorities. And, also, it was strongly stated, the large majority of the responders, that we should support coordination for cross-border enforcement. So with this, I stop here. I'm happy to take any questions.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much for being here, and also for presenting the results of the consultation. So now the members have the possibility to ask questions or come in with remarks. Just let me know if you're still okay. We have Nicolas and then Kastel. Please.
Nikola Minchev
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thanks a lot also to the representatives of the Commission, and thank you for the presentation. I would say in addition to the regulatory efforts, it's also becoming increasingly clear that effective market surveillance depends on the active involvement of stakeholders across the value chain, including industry, distributors, and end users. We have seen examples such as the Europa cable initiative, where industry led communication, guidance, and training have significantly contributed to improving compliance and supporting enforcement efforts on the ground. This suggests that awareness, practical tools, and cooperation with stakeholders can play an important, complementary role to formal market surveillance activities.
In this context, could you elaborate on whether the commission is considering a more systematic approach to promoting such industry-led initiatives across different sectors under the Future European Product Act? And, of course, how can the EU ensure that these initiatives effectively support enforcement while maintaining transparency and avoiding potential conflicts of interest? Thank you very much.
Christel Schaldemose
Thank you so much, Chair, and also thank you to the European Commission for this presentation and the work with the Future European Product Act. I think it's great to hear about what is the outcome of the public consultation. But let me bring to you, maybe not a question, but more a remark. Last week, I spoke to the Danish Chamber of Commerce, and I know that you're also in good contact with them. So thank you very much for that.
They told me. What I realized was that two big product sellers in Europe, they have realized that over the last five years or something like that, when they are checking the products, they have been got manufactured in China, sent to Europe to be sold here. They see rest of lead and rest of tallets in the products. They didn't see that 5 years ago. They see it now when they're checking, and they use a lot of extra resources, human resources in Europe when the goods are coming here, and they are sending quite a lot of goods back to China because they're not complying with the rules.
And those are, you know, the good companies doing what they're supposed to do, check the products and not let them come out on the market if they're not complying. So what I wanna say is that, seeing from my perspective, you have full support to do whatever needed to, make sure that this situation will be changed positively again. Over the last 20 years, we made good rules on the single market in order to have a fair competition and safe environment and safe consumers. And those rules are right now being undermined with products coming from third countries. So I'm joining the Imco committee's trip mission to China next week.
And I think it's very important for us also to take this discussion with the Chinese authorities, because it is difficult for us to see what can be done unless we are making sure that underground in China and other places where the products are manufactured, that they are manufactured in a safe way. So you have the full backing to do what is needed to stop that problem. I think market surveillance is a part, of course, but I also think that we need to look at the responsibility in the chain of economic operators, and liability for platforms is, in my opinion, also part of what we need to do in order to solve it. Thank you very much.
Maria Grapini
Thank you. I will be speaking Romanian. First of all, I'd like to thank the commission for presenting us with the results of this public consultation. I do believe that we need a public consultation, and I believe that the results are true as well. If I look at the market at this, 62% said that there are problems with controls.
If you were to look at more countries, the percentage would have gone even higher. We can contribute to the market with the new customs code that we are working on. Just as Christal was saying, we have more than 2,000 customs checkpoints. And if one product passes one of these checkpoints, it has access to the entire internal market. I do not understand some things, so I have some questions now.
First of all, you said that products sold online also need to have their certificates integrated. Were you talking about quality certificates? Or I'm not sure about this. And consumers are also not sure. Who issues such quality certificates for online products?
The idea is great, but how do we check online whether a product is good or not? And those who said that there's a difference between online and offline were right. The conditions are not the same. We've been encouraging online cross-border trade, but we must not reduce quality and consumer protection. So I would like to ask you, please, how have you been thinking to take into account quality certificates for online products?
And then the CE marking. I've been thinking about the CE marking very much as well. I do not believe that it sends the correct message to the consumer. Where is the product manufactured? And I, as a consumer, at the end of the day, I'm interested not in where the product is packaged, but where it's manufactured.
So we need to push harder on this. You've been saying also that there is no consensus here. The question is, how do we fix it? How do we find a solution? It's very important to not lead the consumer into error with this CE marking.
I agree that the commission should be able to have more powers to take some measures. But just as Christel was saying, consolidating controls must be made throughout the entire chain, and equally through all national authorities. Without equality among all of the national authorities, who all need to have the same high standards, then we cannot have a safe internal market. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you. I put myself on the list. In general, as I also said in the introduction, of course, you know that the parliament worked on the own initiative report on the NF and, of course, also asked in several resolutions for a stronger European market surveillance authority. So, you're all completely aware of that. I also want to come back to the CE marking.
I wonder if you can explain in general a little bit more about how much effect it has because you mentioned it that, of course, for me, it has at the end of the question if it stays on or not has to do also with the fact how effective it is. And I also think if it doesn't make any sense, then we need to either reform it or abolish it. So why is there so much? I guess it's fraud. Right? Because when the com companies say they have a CE marking, but then they don't comply, there is fraud in the picture.
Or how does it exactly work? Or what is the missing link? What is not working in the whole chain of getting the CE mark and who's controlling it? But overall, I wonder if we abolish it, would it have any negative consequences, or do we need to replace it with something or not? This is probably just to get a little bit more detail in this e-marking, because I find the question very interesting.
And then I just look around if anybody else wants to come in from the members. If not, then I give the commission the floor for answering our questions.
Speaker 4
Yes. Thank you all very much for these very, say, pertinent questions. I will maybe start with the one regarding the noncompliant goods coming into the market from third countries. And I can already share with you that we are exploring solving the this issue from a multidimensional perspective. One of it would be, for example, the digital product passport.
The digital product passport will actually allow only compliant products to come into the EU market. How? It means that each and every product that will be sold from a third country to the EU will have to have a valid digital product passport. A valid digital product passport would mean that it has all the necessary information related to the compliance or the safety aspects of that product, which also includes the identifiable authorized representative. Because through the digital product passport, we are going to have a feature by which we can identify the companies that actually exist.
Right? So an authorized representative, it has to be verified first to be able to be plugged into the product passport. So that's the first thing. Second, we are going to embed features by which we are going to be able to see that there is a contract between the, let's say, in this case, the example that Miss Charles de Mosse gave, it's about, sort of a Chinese manufacturer. There is a contract between the Chinese manufacturer and the EU company that assumes the role of an authorized representative.
So that's one aspect. And, of course, the digital product passport with feed will be the key tool for enforcement at the customs, and we can see the product even before they come into the EU when they are shipped, actually. We can have this checked in real time. Of course, now just to, I mean, be realistic, we are not going to have the digital product passport overnight, and we are not going to have the digital product passport for all products. We are starting with a new legislative framework, so the scope of 31 legal acts, first.
And then our vision is to provide a kind of a placeholder so that each and every product sector in the future that would want to have a digital product passport embedded can hook on this and actually have it. Now for the question about the authorized representative, the database of the authorized representatives in the EU will already exist. So that is something we can already do irrespective of the product having or not the DPP. So that's one, actually, one angle that we look into solving the issue. Of course, another angle would be to leverage or to beef up the responsibilities of the authorized representative because now what they are, they are just a mere contact point between the Marcus Williams authorities and the EU third country manufacturer.
Right? So how the market's finance authority can take from the, let's say, this case, Chinese manufacturer, the technical file of the product or the product compliance information? There are no means to do that. So here, we are looking at leveraging and beefing up the responsibilities of the authorized representative so that the Marcus Velocity, they have a real interlocutor for product compliance of that particular product they represent. So these are the two aspects that I wanted to clarify with respect to imports.
Then, on the question about the certificates, we are not adding anything. We're just improving the system. Here, we are talking about certificates that are issued by the notified bodies. Right? So in our system, for certain types of products such as high risk that are considered high risk products, in certain cases, in certain situations, there is an obligation to involve a notified body.
And that notified body will test and will kind of approve that the product is safe, and issue a certificate. And that is part of what we call the technical file or the compliance of the product. And, therefore, what we want to do is to be able to merge this database of the certificates which does not exist at your level. We have a database of the notified bodies, but we do not have a database of the certificates they issue. So we want to provide full transparency to market surveillance authorities on the product itself, even those products that are certified by notified bodies.
And then about the CE Mark. So the question actually is assessed and is part of the impact assessment. You know? What are the effects of keeping or not keeping it? Because what we have here, we have a new kind of element that we bring in.
It's this little QR code of the digital product passport that will give us the information about the compliance and the validity of the product. And is done in real time is digital, which is in a way the same objective of the CE Mark, except that with the digital product passport, we actually can see in real time if the product is compliant or not. How do we see that? First, because it has the full information about the compliance. So the digital product passport cannot become a valid tool unless it has the necessary information in it, as I mentioned before, also related to the authorized representative.
So that's the secondly, the digital product passport can be modified only by the manufacturer that has created the digital product pass or by the market surveillance authorities if they find that the product is noncompliant. They have the possibility to flag the digital product passport as invalid. So here we have a better, I would say, tool in order to see the compliance of the product in real time. Now with the c marking, the question is, okay, do we keep it or not? And if we keep it, should it stay next to the QR code on the product, or should it be embedded into the digital product passport?
So these are the kind of two questions we are assessing now, as we speak, through the impact assessment.
Christel Schaldemose
Thank you very much. Well, as I understand it, quite a lot will be based on this digital passport and the way that it works. When I speak to companies in Denmark, for instance, they are quite afraid of that because they say that already today, all the documents are perfect. There are no nothing to say about the documents that are sent with the goods. However, the goods are not OK.
So what you're suggesting, who should be liable in the end? I mean, is it possible to find this authorized dealer, etc.? I just wanna know who in the end will be able to really be responsible for something that is not complying with the rules. And who should go after them? Is it the individual consumer?
Or who should do it? So I'm not saying that the digital product passport will not work, but I understand from the companies that they are quite afraid of that because they say that it is so easy today with AI, etcetera, to manufacture a digital passport. And then, well, the papers are good, but the products beneath is not.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. I have a follow-up question on the CE marking. I mean, everything you said is crystal clear, and I got it. But my question was different, like because even if you have in the QR code all the information, this is also the same with the CE marking. There is a seal on the thing, but who makes sure that it's really controlled?
And what is the problem that the CE marking, the products of the CE marking often don't comply? Is there not enough to the notified bodies who control the CE marking to work, or, like, what is the underlying problem? This wanted to know. And for the labeling, of course, I would say if you wanna keep it and add it in the QR code. Of course, it doesn't make sense to have the QR code and then 50 different things next to it.
But, okay, this is just my question was a different one. Just who the compliance, okay. You get it. I get it. You look at the CE mark or you get the QR, you scan the QR code.
But what is the underlying problem of why the CE mark is not working? Just double checking if there's any other more questions. If not, then please.
Speaker 4
Thank you, chair. Maybe I will start with that one. I think the delta here between the C Mark and the QR code, the DPP, is that the C Mark is a mark based on self-assessment. Right? So the manufacturer self-assess that the product is compliant.
Whereas for the QR code, there is a check. Right? Because we have specific fields by which we are going to encode the information, including, I mentioned, the certificates from the notified bodies and all the relevant information related to the product compliance. So there is a priority check. So that's the difference between, I would say, the DPP and the CE Mark.
And then maybe I can already reply quickly to the previous question. As I mentioned, we have a multidimensional approach to the problem of the authorized representative and, in general, of noncompliant products. I gave one would be a solution would be through the DPP, although it's not the, I would say, one that will solve all the problems. There is also the solution that we try to provide with leveraging the responsibilities of the authorized representative, making this economic operator established in the EU accountable and liable for the products that come into the EU. And this is really to sort of a concept of an economic cooperator that is adapted to the b2c dimension.
So the products that they come from third countries directly to the consumers.
Anna Cavazzini
Yeah. Thank you so much. That was it, all? Yeah. Thank you so much.
So I don't see any more members. So then, that would conclude agenda item five. And, of course, yeah, we are looking forward to the upcoming legislation. And, of course, very good that you did the public consultations and, yeah, that we discussed it here a little bit. So, this brings us to agenda item six. Aliexpress faces EU scrutiny for the systemic sale of unsafe and counterfeit goods.
So, you know, that we, in the Imco Committee, had decided to, every time we meet, also put one item on ecommerce on the agenda, because the problem is so pertinent. It will also be, of course, the content of our travel to China that all the reports, all the statistics show that there is a huge problem with products not complying, unfair competition, and so on. And we regularly also invite different platforms to discuss with them. We are very happy that Aliexpress agreed to come here tonight. And then, of course, I welcome you, the delegation.
I also welcome the commission representatives from DG Grow, DG Synt, DG Taxot. And I just wanted to mention, but you all know it, that AliExpress was designated a very large online platform in '23. The commission opened formal proceedings against AliExpress on March 24, and then the commission also found AliExpress in breach of its obligations to assess and mitigate risks related to the dissemination of illegal products and also other items. So we wanna use this exchange today to see where we stand with compliance, with the different proceedings, with AliExpress, of course, also changing some of the practices according to the commission, and see where there's still gaps. So first, I give the floor to the commission, and I guess we start with, again, Felicia.
Yes. Please. Head of unit, as we know already from DG Grow.
Speaker 4
Yes. Thank you very much. Try to be very brief. So the European parliament has sent a very clear message on ecommerce, during the plenary debate on ecommerce, safety and regulatory compliance. All political groups have acknowledged the urgency of tackling the influx of unsafe, low-value imports mainly coming from China.
And there is a clear, broad agreement on one point. Online and offline sales must be subject to the same rules. What is not working today? And the parliament has, again, rightly identified several structural weaknesses. These were also flagged by the public consultation that I've just debriefed you on, on the revision of the Marcus Valens regulation.
So first, the accountability remains uneven. So there are too many non-EU sellers that are untraceable or unaccountable. Information on the EU-based economic operator, the so-called authorized representative, is often missing or false, and that makes enforcement and consumer redress impossible. Second, the noncompliance is not always a one-off. The same type of illegal or unsafe products can reappear online even after they have been flagged by the Marcus Venice authorities.
The corrective measures are not applied consistently or systematically enough by the national authorities. Third, detection does not yet match the scale of online sales. The illegal and unsafe products are sold online in massive volumes, while enforcement checks remain fragmented and limited. Capacity and coordination are essential. The parliament has underlined that enforcement is not failing only because of gaps in rules, but also because of gaps in capacity and tools.
And 80% of the responders to the public consultation have flagged that authorities indeed lack capacity to address ecommerce challenges. National authorities are dealing clearly with a very high volume of products, especially due to ecommerce limited staff, but also fragmented data and very complex supply chains. Without better coordination and modern tools, enforcement will always lag behind market developments. And also coordination at the EU level will never be enough. Member states might also do their fair share.
And what is the commission doing now? So we fully share this diagnosis. The market surveillance regulation already gives national authorities enforcement powers, some of them being ordering online marketplaces to remove illegal content, illegal products. And as a last resort, also market surveillance authorities have the possibility to block access where the serious risk persists. On a short term, on the commission side, we focus on making existing rules work better in practice.
So what do we do? We are concentrating on more coordinated enforcement actions. And here, we are targeting particularly high-risk products and ecommerce import. For example, each year, we organize joint actions with the member states. And we just closed last week the 2024 campaign, that covered 16 sectors.
We have involved 48 market surveillance authorities and 160 experts. And the revelation was the results of these joint actions were that 80% of the products tested were noncompliant, and this 80% refers to the products that were sampled online. We are organizing further actions. We are in full campaign of 2025 joint actions. This year, we launched another round, and we are planning for 2027, where we will add additional joint actions to target the online sales.
Then we are also focusing on better information sharing across the authorities and across the commission. We are turning our system for market surveillance notification into a single entry database so that member states, once they encode their investigations, go to the EU level, and we have full visibility on that, which is not the case, unfortunately, today. We are also working on stronger use of digital detection tools, and we are scaling up the deployment of a proactive web crawler that is sent to the platforms to help inspectors on the ground to identify noncompliant goods. Very quickly on the way forward without preempting, of course, on the revision, we are going to propose, as you know, the European Product Act by end of this year. We were going to address the enforcement gaps linked to online sales and imports from third countries.
We are building on the EPIC call and also on the results of the public consultation, and we are working here fivefold. So we are going to strengthen the instruments to verify, identify, authorized representative. We want to have a clearer and stronger accountability for products sold to EU consumers. We want to build sort of tools and mechanisms to have a stronger and more systematic enforcement both at the national level but also at EU level. And we are going to work on beefing up the digital tools to make them more interconnected and interoperable.
We are undergoing, as we speak, targeted questionnaires and interviews with the relevant stakeholders to collect more data. And last but not least, on this revision, we are working very closely with colleagues from DigiConnect, DigiJust, Taksud to better align the digital, the consumer, customs, and market surveillance agenda. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much, also for the nice bridge. And then I give the floor to Rita Wiesenbeck, director for online platforms from DG Connect.
Speaker 8
Yes. Thank you very much for today's invitation. It's always a very good occasion to compare notes and give you the state of play of where we are. So, we very much welcome this exchange, indeed, today focusing on AliExpress. And, I think as Felicia already mentioned, we have recent figures now, that show that in 2025, the EU imported 5,800,000,000 parcels of low value that represent a 26 year to year increase, since 2024, and 95% of them come from China.
So they account for the lion's share of imports in terms of the parcels, but also amount to only around 1.8% of the total import value. So, basically, although these are very many packages, the average price is less than 9%, so they have only a low proportionally low value. But as we all know, this flood of parcels presents a serious problem in terms of the risk that they are defective, non-compliant, or counterfeit. And also, they pose severe handling problems for EU customs authorities. So as you know, we have had a series of meetings also in the IMCO committee.
We've already taken a series of actions under the DSA against very large online marketplaces. We have opened proceedings against TIMU, AliExpress, and Sheen under the DSA, and we feel that demonstrates our commitment to upholding consumer protection. So as Felicia was mentioning, we are also partnering with other GGs in the commission, as this problem raises indeed multifaceted challenges in various policy areas. So AliExpress, as a designated VLOP under the DSA, has to assess and mitigate risks that relate to the dissemination of unsafe and counterfeit products, also to trader traceability and to the transparency of its recommender systems. So in fact, on March 14, and you mentioned it already, in 2024, the commission opened formal proceedings to investigate potential breaches by AliExpress of its obligations concerning risk assessments in relation to illegal products and the mitigation of such risks.
The investigation also concerned several other areas such as the notice and action systems that allow users to inform it if there are illegal products, also trader traceability, internal complaint handling mechanisms, transparency of its recommender systems, and ads repository. So after the opening of these proceedings, Aliexpress, as you said, has already made several improvements to its platform interface and internal systems. The impact of these improvements is part of the currently ongoing investigation. So on 18 June 2025, the commission accepted and also made binding AliExpress commitments to address some of our concerns, including those involving the internal complaint handling mechanism, the transparency of advertising and recommender systems, the traceability of traders on its services, and the access to data by researchers, as well as specific measures that address the visibility of adult items, so sex toys for minors, and specific misuse of the platform to disseminate illegal listings. So Aliexpress' implementation of and compliance with these commitments was entrusted to a monitoring trustee.
So in this respect, our interaction with Aliexpress is ahead of all others since we already have commitments in place, and we have a monitoring trustee with whom the team works closely to assess whether Aliexpress is indeed complying with its commitments. However, on the same day, so 2025, we also established that, in many respects, AliExpress was not complying with the DSA still. So we preliminarily found that Aliexpress had breached its legal obligations to assess and mitigate risk properly. And, also, we said that the moderation systems are under-resourced, that the enforcement of penalties was inconsistent, and also that malicious actors still have loopholes to distribute illegal items. So this is the case that continues on a potential track to a noncompliance decision.
And, of course, AliExpress had access to the file and was able to submit a response to our preliminary findings. So we're now in the process of assessing its reply, and the investigation is currently ongoing. So, just to give you a full picture, also in relation to our relationship with the monitoring trustee. So the trustee has already delivered a first report. And, there was a specific situation that we also addressed together with the monitoring trustee, which concerns these childlike sex dolls that suddenly manifested on European online marketplaces around November.
So you know that also one of the other platforms was very concerned by that, but we were also in touch with the monitoring trustee to see whether similar issues happened in the context of AliExpress's activities, and we received a reassuring reply by the monitoring trustee after investigation. So, this is where we are. Also, in the wider context of protection of minors, which, of course, is not only in social media, but also in online marketplaces, is a very prominent concern of the legislature, of the parliament, and we prioritize this issue. We had, in December 2025, a workshop, especially with very large online marketplaces, including Aliexpress, to discuss which measures the online marketplaces were taking to safeguard miners on their platform. Basically, the engagement was good.
The exchange of information was also good, but the workshop showed that further work needs to be done on all online marketplaces to ensure effective implementation of the protection of minors guidelines. So let me finish with this. I would really thank the committee for raising this very important issue, and happy to continue the discussion with you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much, Rita. And now, we have Titi Taksut as the last commission representative. Welcome Fernando Perrau de Penning, head of unit, and also Marianne Sigers, head of sector for customs risk management. Welcome.
Speaker 9
Thank you, madam chair. There are some slides that perhaps if they can be displayed because the graphs maybe talk a bit better than the words. Maybe you can pass to the next slide, please. This is an operation conducted organized by Digit, actually, with the heavy cooperation of no particular of DigiGrow and also DigiSante over a total of six months, and conducted in close cooperation with customs that were extracting, checking the goods, but with more than 200 market surveillance authorities across the EU. And the operation concerned no fewer than more than 31,000 packages, more than 20,000 toys and small electronics, almost 6,000 of cosmetics, 2,000 personal protective equipment, and over 3,000 food supplements, among others, the vitamins.
You move to the next, please. The rates of noncompliance for each of these products were high, in any case, over 50%, 55% for toys and small electronics, 65% for cosmetics. And these are products, by the way, that people put on their skin. 60% of personal protective equipment, gloves, helmets, others, and 63% for food supplements, which are goods that people ingest. And of these products, actually, 81% that were tested, over 800, were found as involving hazards for health and safety.
Move to the next, please. The rate of compliance per platform, you can find ranges from 63% to, in the lowest case, 48% for the toys and small electronics, the first phase. Second, please. Next page. Right.
Thank you. This illustrates, in red and blue, the amount of products that were tested by laboratories. So the actual safety of the product and compliance was tested. And you can see in red the number of cases that were containing or implying safety hazards. Next slide, please.
For cosmetics, we found an actually even higher rate of noncompliance from 80% to, again, 45 45 percent. Next slide, please. And, for personal protective equipment, the rates were also very significant, a bit better, but still seventy-four percent, from seventy-four percent to thirty-three percent. I have to say that the countries of origin of those products, in the case of cosmetics, 63% were exported from China, 22% from the UK, 7% from the US. If we look at the countries of exports for personal protective equipment, those in the slides, 91% were from China and 7% from the US.
Next slide, please. If we look at food supplements, there is a very large variety of platforms, but the degree of non-compliance is even higher. In some cases, all products checked were non-compliant. So this includes vitamins. The origin of the country of export of those products was more varied.
38% came from the US, 37% from China, 21% from the UK. If we look at the final slide, this information has been made public on the DG tax suit website. As the subject is AliExpress, we can say that AliExpress appears in all those graphs. And the best compliance rate observed for AliExpress was 53 percent of noncompliance. This information has now been shared with DG Connect for the purposes of their own investigations.
The lessons learned from this analysis are being now drawn. Proposals will, in due course, be made as appropriate. Then customs reform will provide new tools that we'll use to the maximum extent based on the fact that e-commerce platforms will become also actors, responsible for customs legislation. Monitoring will have to continue to make sure that this is not a one-off operation. And, of course, further action will depend also on policy decisions that will have to be taken.
Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much, and also for illustrating what we're talking about with shocking data. So now we come to the representatives of AliExpress. I welcome Eric, Palantir, Alibaba vice president and head of international government affairs, and Cindy Hui, general counsel of AliExpress. Thank you so much again for being here, and, yeah, presenting yourself also in the scrutiny session with this parliament. So you have now the floor for around 7 minutes.
Speaker 10
Madam chair and honorable members of the Imco committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. We also appreciate the presence of colleagues from DG Connect, DG Grow, and DG TAXUD. We value our long-standing and constructive engagement with the European Commission on these matters. I've been privileged to serve at Alibaba for almost 11 years now and have personally witnessed and contributed to the work that the company has and continues to do on these very important issues. And I humbly appreciate the opportunity to listen and discuss them with you again today.
Speaker 11
Allow me to very briefly remind the committee who we are. Alibaba is a global company active in ecommerce, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, operating in more than 180 countries. Our mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. As Jack Ma, one of our founders, has said, Alibaba was born in China but made for the world. In Europe, a significant part of our activity is to support European businesses from well-known brands to SMEs and reaching consumers in China.
Speaker 10
In 2024 alone, Alibaba's consumer platforms facilitated over €30,000,000,000 worth of European products sold to consumers in China, supporting over 130,000 EU jobs in 2024. This exported amount from Europe to China is exponentially larger than the value of goods imported to Europe from China on AliExpress. AliExpress, which is part of Alibaba, has been operating in Europe for more than 15 years as a business to consumer marketplace. It connects European consumers with third party sellers both within the EU and internationally, including from China. Let me now turn to how we approach our role in Europe.
Speaker 11
We see ourselves as guests in Europe. This means acting with humility, respect, and transparency, contributing positively to the European economy, and fully adhering to European rules and standards. Our objective is to be a responsible corporate citizen and a trusted partner for consumers, sellers, and regulators. We closely follow regulatory developments, including the reform of the EU Customs Union, the product safety framework, and upcoming consumer protection initiatives, and we welcome the efforts that make online shopping safer and more transparent for European consumers. Engagement and cooperation are central to our approach.
We have actively been involved with the European Commission and Parliament throughout the development and implementation of the Digital Services Act. Even prior to our designation as a very large online platform, we contributed to public consultations and maintained regular dialogue with DG Connect. Since designation, we have treated compliance not simply as an obligation, but as an opportunity to strengthen our systems and governance and build a trusted business with all stakeholders. On product safety and the fight against counterfeits, we have often also gone beyond the legal requirements through additional voluntary commitments. AliExpress was a founding signatory of key EU initiatives, including the 2016 memorandum of understanding on fighting counterfeits, the 2018 product safety pledge, recently reinforced as the product safety pledge plus, and the consumer protection pledge.
We have also regularly supported EU-funded training programs such as SPEAK to help Chinese sellers better understand and comply with EU product safety rules. The safety of consumers is fundamental to our platform. Our value proposition is to offer a wide range of products that are reliable and affordable, with transparent prices, and maintaining consumer trust is essential. And when issues arise, we take responsibility and act to address them. This principle underlines and underpins our work under the DSA.
In June 2025, the European Commission accepted a set of commitments from AliExpress addressing many areas that were under investigation. These commitments are now legally binding and subject to oversight by an independent monitoring trustee, reporting directly to the European Commission. Allow me to highlight a few concrete measures that were part of those commitments and which have a direct implication on AliExpress's detection and removal of unsafe and counterfeit goods. First, we have improved notice and action mechanisms. Reporting tools are now accessible to all users, including non-registered users, through a clearly visible and user-friendly interface.
Number two, enhance trader traceability. We have strengthened seller verification processes, including identity checks, and increased transparency by making seller information easily accessible on product pages. Third, combating hidden links. In addition to our own internal systems, we now work with specialized third parties to detect and prevent deceptive practices involving hidden links that are used to try to sell counterfeit goods on our platform. And these efforts have led to a significant reduction in such activity over the last year.
Fourth, stronger controls for sensitive products. We have reinforced the proactive screening of sellers and listings in categories such as food supplements and other areas, and tightened compliance requirements for partners in our affiliate program. On the protection of minors online, an area of appropriate great attention to members of this house and to me as a grandfather of five. We committed to limiting visibility by default for products intended for adults, with functionalities such as automatically blurring images of adult products using AI-powered real-time scanning technology. And even though the commission accepted our commitments in this area, we have recently decided to further strengthen our control measures.
Building on the recent commission guidelines, we are further strengthening standards through enhanced age verification mechanisms using a privacy-conscious two-step approach that prioritizes less intrusive methods. Those efforts are delivering results. Our independent DSA auditor has reported substantial improvements between our first and second compliance assessments, with positive outcomes in 92% of the evaluated areas. At the same time, we recognize we have much more work to do. We are actively engaging with the commission to address outstanding issues including preventing the reappearance of illegal listings, strengthening penalties, and accelerating the closure of noncompliant sellers, improving controls against the circumvention of product certification requirements, and enhancing proactive detection of intellectual property infringements.
To conclude, we remain committed to continuous improvement and open dialogue with the regulators. Honorable members, we appreciate the opportunity to be here today to listen, first, to engage, and to answer your questions. We also look forward to welcoming a delegation of members of this committee in China in early April, together with the senior management of AliExpress, to continue this important exchange. And thank you for your attention, and I look forward to your questions and your comments.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much for your elaborations. We now have the round of members. We start with our chair of the DSA working group, Kristel Scheidemussen. Then, of course, if you wanna come in, let me know. Thank you.
Christel Schaldemose
Very much, chair. And also, thanks to you, AliExpress, for being here. I have to say that, you know, it sounds great what you're doing, but reality is not great because what we see and what we just heard about is that the number of non-compliant goods entering into the EU is simply too high, also coming from your platform. So I will not be happy, and I don't believe in your systems until the day I see that it has an impact. So where is the well known Chinese efficiency when it comes to checking these things?
I think that you're not doing what you could. One thing is complying with the law, but you could even do more. The thing is that if we had that number of non-compliant products being manufactured in the EU, those companies would not be able to survive in the EU with this high level of failures. And I do think that it is problematic that you're not doing more. So my main concern is, of course, safety, but I also think that it is an unfair competition towards the companies who are complying with the rules we have in the EU.
And I've been a member of the European Parliament for 20 years. And in all these years, I've been a member of this committee. And in all these years, we have done a great job, if I could say it myself, to make sure that we had a fair competition on the single market, safe products, and a system where we could check whether things were done in a correct manner. But the business model of your platform, amongst others, is, in fact, undermining this. So the thing is that right now, you're earning the money, but the taxpayers of Europe will have to pay for the market surveillance and the customs to do their job, and I find that unfair.
So when can you promise us to be in a situation where we can trust every product that is sold from AliExpress in the EU? It sounds as if you do wanna do things better, but when can you deliver? Can you deliver already this year? I think so. You need to do so.
Otherwise, it's just fine words. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you, Christa, for renew, Santo Gossi. And, no, sorry, I have the first EPP. Sorry, Santro. I overlooked the EPP, Pablo. Thank.
Pablo Arias Echeverría
Thank you very much, sir. I'm going to speak in Spanish. Firstly,
Thank you very much indeed to Aloe Express for joining us today and to tell us a little bit about the issues at stake. And thank you to the commission for talking about this topic. I've got a couple of questions myself. I completely agree with Mr. Schaldemosser. We're talking a lot here, but not actually doing anything.
We were talking about a series of platforms, in this particular case, AliExpress, which are not complying with our legislation, and which are using our system much like other platforms in other countries. And this is their method that they decide not to comply with. We've got an American method. We've got the Chinese measures. So there are many different methods used by these VLOPs who talk, but never actually act.
So looking back at 2024, 16,000 packages arriving daily in the EU under the threshold of €150. That's all well and good for them because it's completely impossible to check whether or not they are complying with the legislation. They said that they are. But looking at the information that we've just got from DG FISC, it seems that they're not complying with the rules. And my question is, perhaps you take a different approach to the one we've had to date, to looking at how many parcels are coming into the EU and looking at how many comply with the laws. Now if you look at this under the €150 threshold, how many products come in from AliExpress into the EU market?
And how many fall below this €150? And how many are actually above €150? Because it seems that every single parcel that enters the EU is under the €150, so the approach is to systematically declare that all these parcels fall under the threshold of the application of EU law. That means we don't have to check them. This means we're not checking them.
We're not harming the competitiveness of our own companies and perhaps harming our consumers. So it would be good to know how many of these parcels fall above and below the €150 threshold coming from a platform such as Aliexpress, which is the biggest marketplace on a global level when it comes to e-commerce. Might be interested to know whether they intend to comply with the rules or if this is just a talking shop for them. It seems they don't have the intention to do so.
Now Santo Agosti.
Sandro Gozi
Thank you. Thank you, chair, and thanks to the representative of Alex Spread. At least they are here without having been invited six times, like their competitor, and this is already something constructive. However, the mismatch between the figure of the commission and the measure that you took is terrible. I mean, you just told us that you have taken a series of measures, but the figures we hear from the commission, they're really very bad.
I mean, 80% of non-compliance is really extremely concerning for us. So, I mean, I would like to understand how to, if you could dwell more, you mentioned something, but you should dwell more on how do you conduct your systemic risk assessment, which voluntary preventive mitigation measure do you take or do you envisage to take? Strict seller verification. Do you do it? Pre-listing controls.
Do you do it? Restriction on high-risk categories in the light of your experience. Do you do it? Yes, no. If yes, how?
If no, why? I for me, for us, as we knew, it's very concerning your recommender system because we fear that your recommender system may amplify the visibility of noncompliant goods. So I mean, how does it work? How does your algorithm recommendations and your algorithmic system work? And how can you ensure that they do not amplify illegal or unsafe products?
I would like you to be a little bit more specific on these two areas. Thank you very much, sir.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you. Then I had put myself. I would like to know a little bit more on this number that I find interesting on the import export ratio. So how much more are you on your platform exporting to China vis-à-vis importing from China? Is it, like, 1% more or 30% more, just to be a bit more specific?
And then just out of interest, because we are going to China, as we said, what are the Chinese compliance rules for products coming from the EU? I find this quite interesting. And then the second question, the commission noted very specifically in which three areas there are still problems and noncompliance. So why are you not complying? And what are you doing to comply when it comes to risk mitigation, illegal items, and this penalty question?
So the commission mentioned three items where there's still noncompliance with their recommendations. So what are you doing, and why not yet? Thank you so much. So then I have Nicolas Minchef, our vice-chair.
Nikola Minchev
Thank you very much, madam chair. I would like to address my question to the representatives of Vale Express. Firstly, while the EU remains an open market, it's still a market with rules. And the systematic presence of unsafe, noncompliant, and counterfeit products is no longer just a concern. It's a threat to consumer safety, and also, it's a violation of fair competition.
With so many examples in the presentation by the European Commission representative, but for instance, we continue to see a flood of electronic goods and toys that fail basic safety standards alongside counterfeit products, that undermine European businesses. We'll no longer tolerate the business model that profits from low-quality dumping and bypasses our rigorous standards. In this context, I was going to ask you what concrete immediate measures Miss AliExpress is taking to stop being a gateway for noncompliant goods. You mentioned, mister Pelletier, in your intervention that you have already undertaken some concrete measures. But I want to ask you, when did you implement them, and what result do you see from them?
You mentioned that in 92% of the cases, you see a positive development. But then, I'm curious what does positive development mean, because a product can either be compliant or noncompliant. There cannot be anything in between. So what result do you see from this? Because as also Sandrogozi mentioned, before me, there is a huge disparity between what you explain as measures and your aims and what the commission is presenting to us and what we can see ourselves as well.
Thank you very much.
Anna Cavazzini
Great. Now we have Maria Krapini from S and D, also our Vice-Chair.
Maria Grapini
Thank you very much. I will be speaking Romanian, so I will wait for a second. I would like to thank the commission as well, even though you've scared us a little bit with the numbers you presented us. And I would also like to thank the representatives of AliExpress. You might be surprised, and the colleagues might be surprised.
I've been to China multiple times. I am an engineer in the textile industry. I've purchased products from China because China does sell quality products. The wrong part, I may put it like that, is the fact that some of our imports into Europe is low quality. And there are two aspects here.
So, on the one side, how do you analyze some things? And I can give you examples from the field where I work. In Europe, we have the REACH regulation as regards oncogenic substances, and so on. How do you check for such substances in China that they are not used in the textile industry or on other products, for example? Because we need to undertake those analyses here in Europe, and they are a cost for businesses.
So they are relevant for a fair competition. On the second part, you were talking about €30,000,000,000 worth of imports to China. Now, European imports into China, have those been checked? What are their compliance rates in comparison to Chinese imports into Europe? You might see that these percentages are very different.
So the products that leave Europe and go into third countries are much less likely to be noncompliant because in Europe, we have certain high standards in Europe that we must abide by. You're also saying that you operate in 180 countries, if I understand correctly. And when it comes to noncompliance that we've seen in the European market, I'm also curious to see what degree of noncompliance there is in your other markets. So for me, protection doesn't mean closing our internal market, far from it. But I'm also very much interested in improving noncompliance percentages, especially when it comes to toys, food, or textile products because these affect the health of peoples.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Dora David for the EPP.
Dóra Dávid
Thank you. I welcome the fact that AliExpress has entered into legally binding commitments following the commission's investigation. But as we just heard, the problems clearly still persist. Unsafe, non-compliant goods continue to flood the internal market. And it's actually because of this that the Hungarian consumer protection authorities have just launched mystery shopping sweeps to test these products.
And EU rules are supposed to guarantee safe products, so that's what I expect as an EU consumer in the EU. I don't want cosmetics that give me a skin rash, and I don't want to take food supplements that are harmful to my health. And these numbers today, frankly, really don't give me much confidence. So the question I have to AliExpress is, it's great that you are taking measures, but 53% of products being non-compliant is really bad. And you say you closely adhere to applicable laws, but what's going wrong with your risk mitigation measures?
And the new measures that you're talking about, I mean, when are these going to take effect and when are you going to reach 0% non-compliance? The question I have to the commission is with regard to unsafe and illegal products, which we keep seeing is an ongoing and actually a pretty urgent problem. Have you considered interim measures under the DSA pending the outcome of the longer investigations? And secondly, what are you seeing on the implementation of the protection of minors' guidelines so far? Thank you.
Andreas Schwab
Thank you very much, chairman, colleagues. I mean, it has already been mentioned. In 2025, the commission accepted and made legally binding a series of commitments from AliExpress, and I think that's great, but we are here not to celebrate this. We are here checking the delivery. And I think it has become clear.
And as we are going to China soon, mister chairwoman, it is important to speak about that beforehand. That notice and action mechanism should be working in a way that when counterfeit designs are reappearing, they should not come back. And apparently, and that's my question to AliExpress, apparently, the know your business customer protocol is not working in a way that when something has been discovered as being unlawful, it's not coming back. The fact is it's coming back, and that is not acceptable. And to the commission, I would like to ask the question, Mr.
Chairman, we have plenty of European companies, especially SMEs, that are burdened with high standards, standards that we partly are very proud of. And AliExpress allows sellers to bypass, for example, the REACH regulation on chemicals. What is the commission doing to make sure that such circumventions of EU standards will be excluded?
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. And with that, I give the floor back to AliExpress.
Speaker 22
Ma'am chairperson, honorable members, thank you for the question and the great opportunity for us at a very timely occasion to exchange our views with the European Parliament. This is a very important topic that is very close to the heart of us at AliExpress. We have been working at the forefront to build a very robust and comprehensive system in order to address a lot of the risks that have been raised today. And in particular, at this forum, I think it is going to be a very good exchange of views, in a very transparent manner. Just now, we've heard various very constructive questions and guidance for our platform, a lot of which relate to product safety and how AliExpress addresses those risks and mitigation and timeliness.
Speaker 21
We also observed some questions on seller verification and our recommender system, which I will take going forward, and my colleague will also deal with some of the balance of the questions. So, moving on to product safety. First of all, I would like to reiterate that there is no place for any non-compliant or unsafe product on AliExpress. All offending items that are detected, of course, are immediately removed, and serious sellers are always penalized and not allowed to re-register, and the deposit could be taken away. So, this is the starting point.
But just policies are not enough. I think our intent and our energy are also very important. In AliExpress, we acknowledge and embrace full ownership of all the risk that is on our platform. And dangerous, unsafe items are detected and screened on a real-time basis, not because of the price tag on them. And we screen every single item on our platform on a risk-based basis to make sure that they are dealt with in accordance with the DSA on a risk basis, so that the highest risk gets the most attention and removal on a prompt basis according to the DSA.
Speaker 23
And with this, we have to ensure that the effectiveness is being shown in a matrix and manner and data driven format that is satisfactory to the European Commission. So, let me go first into our product compliance structure, because this goes into how we regulate product safety for consumers in the European market. First of all, regardless of when an item is being made, we will use listing at stage a strict product policies, and also for high risk categories, we also require certification and documentation before listings are required to go live. We also deploy automatic detection at scale. We are one of the first platforms to have a full-scale and comprehensive method to have listing screen through keyword filters and image recognition tools.
Speaker 21
A lot of these were not even existing for the sector a few years ago, but we continue to upgrade our platform using image recognition, text-based and pattern-based recognition to screen out the bad offenders and the offending items. We also continuously update our detection signals. So, other than internal intelligence, we also use external resources such as EU safety gate market surveillance regulators reports to capture newly identified risks and unsafe products, and we also feed information back to safety gate so that all of Europe can also take note of new patterns that we discovered at AliExpress so that there's a good positive feedback loop. So, our detection is dynamic and data-driven. It can never be static.
So, to answer some of the question, you know, when will this be ready or not, I see the product compliance and safety governance as an always evolving process. We cannot say there's one button that we can turn on and off and all the illegal products will go away or that this will be static at a certain point, then we will have complete assurance, of course. But then what we're trying to do is to devote more and more resources and energy to pattern detection in order to make sure that we're always steps ahead of the offenders. And as we are speaking, actually thousands of listings are being taken down at the moment. And we also work with third parties to make sure that we continue to be robust, such as Europol, the EU Intellectual Property Office, and then we also work with key national stakeholders such as the NVMA, the toy associations to find out where new patterns of wrongdoing may be. When we find vetted leads, just like last year in terms of counterfeits, we found about 300 vetted leads and referred at least 45 cases to the criminal process.
So, this continuous evolution is what we're trying to build in an increasingly speedy manner under the guidance of the commission through our committed commitments and also voluntary enhancements, which I will go into. And also take this structure to highlight that we don't just regulate certain categories of products. In fact, in our moderate content moderation, other than unsafe and prohibited products for the European market, we also look for informational products on our platform which will pose a risk for public security, which could incite cyber violence, scams and fraud, which will be destructive to animal welfare, to minors, which could incite illegal or harmful speech, violent self-harm, and we also put a lot of effort on our data protection. So, I say, this is not a static process, and we see that with the systematic risk assessment under the DSA, we will continue to create more immediate impact. And in terms of additional enhancements, which were asked, are we doing more to mitigate?
The answer is yes. We have actually been increasing our moderation resources to almost 1,000 people just in the content moderation team. And the latest quality assurance team, all of this is implemented after June 2025, which is after the report that we have seen, is showing its impact. As Eric has mentioned, we now have more than 99% accuracy in the quality assurance that we've received. We've also created a repair database.
So, in addition to the database of patterns and infringing keywords and all that, we already have. In order to maintain the cleanliness of our platform, we created an additional reappearance database which in a few months we already have more than 80,000,000 samples in there, and it is growing as we speak. And we also work with European accredited agencies to help us with counterfeit detection, mystery shopping, and lab testing. So to address a question on maybe problematic textile or manufacturing, we rely also on third-party verification in order to give us more input on the goods which may flow into Europe. So, terms of pre-listing interception and proactive control, we're seeing increasing data points which would help assure the cleanliness.
Of course, from time to time, bad actors will still try to circumvent the platform, but this we ask for a collaborative approach to make sure that we understand where the latest risk gaps are, you know, such as some of the items you have highlighted, and then we will work towards combating them. I will also take this opportunity to answer on the recommended system, how to make sure that the recommended system will not reveal, you know, offensive content. I think in order to make sure that people do not get recommended or sent files or recommendation about illegal content. We should have no illegal content on the platform. So which is why the foregoing message that I've been sharing on how we conduct our product compliance is actually fundamental.
And as part of our voluntary commitments, we also made a very clear matrix on how we have clear explanation of our recommended system, very easy and clear opt out option for personalized recommendation, and our transparency center will be able to aid on this. And so, I don't think that with a good governance on our listings, the recommended system will pose an incremental risk. And on seller verification, we also share the European concern, you know, not just under the DSA, but also under GPSR. Before that, we were one of the early signatories to the safety pledge and other MOUs. So, we made sure that with the DSA now in place, all of our sellers actually have the certification check, and they are fully traceable, and the contact information is all on the storefront.
And we will continue to make sure that any seller who has been removed from our platform is forever banned. We also feed that information into a pool of serious offenders who will also get reported to crime investigation authorities. I think with this, I will also share my time with Eric who will address some of the macro China Europe issues raised. Thank you.
Speaker 10
Madam chair, I'm conscious of time. Is it okay to take a minute or two to, yeah. Yes. Preliminary answer to that? Okay. Thank you.
So the questions on what Alibaba does to facilitate the sale of EU products to China. Yes. We've been doing that for a number of years. The one of the first listing rules, whether you're selling from another country into the EU on AliExpress or selling from Europe to China, is well, the first listing rule is that a seller must ensure that they're selling that product in accordance with the rules and recommendations into the market in which they're selling. So just to kind of reset, remember, all of our, we operate marketplaces.
Speaker 11
We don't operate country-specific marketplaces. So an AliExpress seller that's selling into the EU or selling into The United States or selling into Korea is often the same one. It just presents in different languages. But if it's going to be delivered or sold to those things, it has to comply with the local laws and regulations. And so we are engaged very actively in many of those countries.
I know the question was appropriately asked, how do we do in other countries on this? And these are issues that we are also taking lessons we're learning at the EU level under the DSA, under the GPSR, and applying them across our governance structures, to learn a lot of things. This is not a unique issue that we face in the EU or that cross-border ecommerce from all over the world faces. But, this is the challenge that we're trying to lean into and take best practices in other places. With respect to the requirements of consumer protection law in China, there are a lot of similarities between what the EU is trying to do and what is required in China.
In fact, some of the lessons that we've learned on platform obligations of how to do control mechanisms, we learned first because China first imposed them on us and we're responsible for that, and we brought a lot of those lessons here. But this is a very dynamic commercial market. As my colleague has mentioned, these rules and the actors and the things that are happening change all the time. So we fully appreciate and we agree that we wanna get 100% compliance, but there's not gonna be a day where we're at 100% that we're satisfied in this. It is an act of various things.
We have a distance to go between the measurements that have shared here and even our own measurements. 92% is still not sufficient from our perspective. We need to get closer to that. We'd be happy when you're in China. We can maybe go into a little bit more details of some of the committee members on some of the aspects of China regulation and how that is working.
The other thing I know that there are discussions going on between China and the EU that I know DG Just and others are having about how there's maybe some checking and inspections and things that can be done between the two markets at a government authorities level. We fully support those on both sides and are very eager to engage in that. Your question with respect to AliExpress's imports into the EU, that's currently not a public number, but I would say that that is significantly less than a third of the amount that we specifically sort of facilitate on sales from the EU to China. And we can have some other follow-up conversations on what that looks like and the composition of that, but we recognize that as an important, again, contribution to what we're doing. Cross-border trade has been in our DNA since the very beginning.
We want to try to be the best at this, the safest at this, and do our responsible part. But we do know, just in closing of that, we have work to do. There's more that we can do. We're not satisfied with this. We appreciate the sincerity and the intensity that's been brought to these questions.
We take this very seriously, and we're prepared to continue to engage with the committee. And we will be following up with each of the members more in detail, specifically on the questions they've raised, to do more listening, and to get more into more specifics as is necessary. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. We don't have time for new questions, but does any of the mem do all of have the feeling your questions were answered? If not, very quickly, let me know, then we can do a short follow-up. Andreas, you want to come in? If not, then I give the floor back to the Commission.
Last chance? Okay. I give the floor back to the Commission. Ah, Maria. But no new question.
Just follow up.
Maria Grapini
Not a new question, but a response.
You haven't answered my question, in fact. How do you control textile products in China? Because we base our controls on reach. How do you do it?
Anna Cavazzini
There was one follow-up question, so please, probably you can reply.
Speaker 10
We do similar types of things about testing. So REACH obviously is selling into the EU. Questions on the China side. We do comply with the China rules and regulation of textiles and various things. They are different, and so different standards there.
And we can get back to you more specifically on exactly how we do that. I don't have the details of that currently with me, but I will get that for you, ma'am.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. With that, give the floor back to the commission, probably in the reversed order, and we start with DG Taxut. If you
Speaker 9
Thank you, madam chair. I will try to reply to the question posed by Mr. Schwab. What can the commission do to prevent it? A consideration only. This is we are dealing with a systemic issue, not one that can be addressed by simply increasing the controls, because otherwise, carrying out controls over 160 packages that arrive every second in the EU is obviously impossible.
In principle, if there is an operator whose imports are noncompliant, two out of the three, obviously, customers will take immediate action, and they will set aside all the goods imported by that operator for control. Otherwise, they know that in two out of three cases, that would be a risk for the consumers. This, obviously, would impose severe strains in the supply chain, would block trade. So I think here, the question is acting at the level of the platforms to make sure that they take all the measures they are responsible for because, in the end, they are those who make available effectively the product in the market because the consumer, they don't go to a Chinese company somewhere lost in the middle of China, but they go to a certain well-known website or from where they buy. Thank you.
Speaker 8
Yes. Thank you very much. So I think there were not too many questions directed to us. In particular, what I've noted is, why is the commission not considering interim measures? And there, I'm happy to respond.
So the DSA has the possibility also for the commission to adopt interim measures. That is in particular the case if there is a threat of serious harm to the users of the service. And, so the way we read that is that our primary task is to assess systemic compliance. So we assess the measures that the platforms are taking in terms of the risk assessment and the measures to mitigate. Now we don't exclude that there are suddenly very dangerous or harmful products like poisonous products or weapons.
And in such, in how do call it, emergency situations, we feel that we can adopt interim measures. There is, however, always a proportionality criterion. Such measures should not go further than what is necessary to prevent the harm while awaiting the adoption of a decision. And so we, in summary, we think we can use that, but we would reserve it for really emergency situations. For now, we haven't seen such emergencies on the platforms of AliExpress yet, but, of course, nothing is ever excluded.
Speaker 4
Yes. Thank you. I think for DigiGrow, there was one relevant for us, a question regarding how noncompliant products don't circumvent your rules. Right? So here, we are working, let's say, two fronts, just to address this question.
One is to make the rules clear and stronger, including accountability. And the second dimension is that we are living in a digital world. Right? So we are moving to digitalize the economy, and this is what we try also to do with the European Product Act, is to beef up the digital aspect of product compliance. And wherever there is automation in the process, I mentioned earlier the DPP, but there could also be other aspects related to non-compliant product that circulate to platforms by which, through automation, we can flag those non-compliant products, making platforms aware of the unsafe product, then that's also an aspect that we are considering in the revision.
But this is, I would say, the baseline because, of course, we have to consider all possible options relating also to obligations of platforms into this area. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thanks so much to everyone participating in the important discussion. I mean, you clearly heard that the priorities of this parliament across groups is getting more product compliance in ecommerce, that members are not happy with the numbers we have right now. But, thanks again also for engaging and showing a little bit the path forward and your commitment. And then we will probably have a follow-up at some point because, again, as you said, it's a process, and we hope next time we will have better numbers at the end. So thanks so much for everyone.
This concludes agenda item six, and basically concludes our Imco session for today. And tomorrow morning, we continue at 9:15. Have a very good afternoon.
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