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MEPs unite to demand urgent action on e-commerce, the Left also wants Amazon, Temu and Shein to be “banned from the EU” (www.euractiv.com)
submitted 1 week ago by Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org to c/europe@feddit.org
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Describing the flood of unsafe products into the EU as a "tsunami", Green MEP Saskia Bricmont said further action was needed to protect consumers and prevent counterfeiting. She added that it was important for the EU to propose "alternative and affordable consumption models" based on the use of local and second-hand products and a circular economy.

[...]

"Non-EU platforms have avoided paying any environmental fees and have undermined efforts to move towards a circular economy," [Maria Guzenina (S&D)] said.

[...]

MEP Leila Chaibi (The Left) also wants the Commission to strengthen rules on digital fairness.

According to her, Amazon, Temu and Shein should be "banned from the EU" as long as they fail to comply with EU laws on conformity standards, as well as social and environmental norms.

[...]

The Commission unveiled its e-commerce strategy in February, which focuses on better cooperation between the EU and national authorities. On the same day, it announced new actions against Shein under its consumer protection rules and emphasised that e-commerce companies such as Amazon, Temu and Shein face ongoing investigations under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA).

However, the Commission said it would wait a year before evaluating its e-commerce strategy.

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[–] Syntha@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

No, it does step towards a circular European Economy. If you actually read into the proposed legislature instead of just assuming what it says based on the headline you would see that.

There is no reason for local stores to be more capable of this than online stores.

Point two the added requirements of staff and logistics = things are more exponentially more expensive is a false dichotomy perpetuated by American corporate interest in order to demoralise and discourage competition, thus increasing their market share and their stranglehold on retail as a whole.

Nobody talks about "exponential", but the simple reality is that it's more expensive due to more staff, more redundancy, more overhead, all of it costs money, there's no way around it.

Point three, you emphasise that the store upcharges you for convenience and then change the argument to be in order to pay people a fair wage.

I never mentioned fair wages, what are you talking about? Local stores have to pay more people for the same volume, massive centralized warehouses are just more efficient.

Notice how you subconsciously demonise the intention of the local retailer?

I do no such thing, your comment is the one dripping with moralizing. I have no problem with local retailers, for a lot of products they are great, especially for the kind that are bigger purchases where people consider them longer or when you might want personal consultation. I have a local whisky store that's absolutely great, great service, great recommendations, they let you taste the product before you buy, you pay like 30% - 40% more, but it's worth it. What I was specifically reffering to were impulse purchases like the thermal paste like the above commenter mentioned, or headphones, charging cables, extension cords and such, where people go to local stores because they want it immediately. You're upcharged like hell on those things, often double the price or even more than for the same product online, borderline rip-offs.

Even though amazon is literally the reason for the accelerated global warming. I would argue the increase in price is directly caused by the decrease in traffic created by amazon and global online retail as a whole.

Well, you'd be wrong. How do you think product arrives at a local store, do you think it's by brought by a stork? Then in addition to that, people drive into town with their inefficient cars, how in the world is that better for the environment than to have it get delivered straight to your home?

Counterargument, removing the “cheap alternative” will 1) Drive additional traffic to stores, allowing people to shop locally again and re level the playing field in terms of competitive pricing.

There already is heavy competition, how do you not get this? There's no magic competition barrier between online and local. That's why so many local stores folded, they were outcompeted. There is no reason to believe local prices would drop if online disappeared, if anything, they would increase because they have inherently, due to geography, less competition.

  1. Allow more retail businesses to open up and meet newly available niche requirements created by the absence of these retailers.

I don't see how that is an inherent good. Just more moralizing.

  1. Create a whole new argument for the increase of income to a liveable minimum wage, benefiting literally everybody but the 1%

What's the argument, man? There is no argument for why we can't force higher wages among warehouse workers and delivery drivers. None.