French authorities have scrapped demand for a full suspension of Shein’s website.
The country demanded on Friday (5 December) a series of measures from the fashion retailer to prove items sold on its website complied with the law, France 24 reported.
However, it retracted its previous call for a three-month suspension of Shein over its sale of banned weapons and childlike sex dolls.
During a Paris court hearing, a lawyer for the state said that the business must implement controls on its website, such as filtering and age verification, to ensure minors could not access pornographic material.
Additionally, state lawyers asked the court to enforce the suspension of its marketplace until the retailer had demonstrated evidence of such controls to French communications regulator Arcom.
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The fast fashion giant disabled its marketplace in France on 5 November, after authorities discovered the illegal products for sale, although its website selling Shein-branded clothes can still be accessed.
The state has invoked Article 6.3 of the country’s digital economy law, which grants a judge powers to prescribe measures with the aim of halting or preventing harm caused by online material.
A state lawyer said: “We don’t claim to be here to replace the European Commission. We are not here today to regulate, we are here to prevent harm, faced with things that are unacceptable.”
The hearing remains ongoing.
In a statement last week, the Paris prosecutor’s office said a three-month suspension could be considered “disproportionate” under the case law of the European Court of Human Rights if the retailer could prove that it had ceased all sales of illegal items.
Despite this, the prosecutor said that it “fully backed” the government’s demand that the fashion group gave evidence of measures it had taken to stop those sales.
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