The EU’s Search to Balance China-origin E-commerce Pressure
Turkish Ambassador Ömer Faruk Doğan writes on the EU’s growing pressure against Chinese e-commerce platforms and its implications for Turkiye.
China, which has made great strides toward dominating world trade, appears to have far exceeded its targets according to the first-half 2026 foreign trade figures. According to data from the China Customs Administration, China’s foreign trade volume in goods reached 3.75 trillion USD in the first six months. Within this framework, China’s exports in the first half of 2026 totalled 2.2 trillion USD, while imports totalled 1.58 trillion USD. In the first six months, China recorded a trade surplus of over 1 trillion USD.
According to the same data, compared with the same period last year, China’s exports grew by 13.4%, while imports grew by 22%. Total trade volume increased by 16.9%. China’s largest markets are led by the United States and the EU.
China’s E-Commerce Surge Puts Pressure on the EU and Turkiye Alike
China is striving to establish dominance not only in goods trade but also in e-commerce, and the EU appears to have been significantly affected by this China-origin e-commerce activity.
According to EU data, China’s e-commerce volume directed toward the European Union (EU) is growing exponentially, particularly influenced by platforms such as Temu and Shein. China’s e-commerce market volume in the EU has reached 167.4 billion dollars, and 91% of low-value packages under 150 euros entering the EU are of Chinese origin. This massive flow toward the EU corresponds to approximately 12 million packages per day. According to European Commission data, 4.6 billion low-value (under 150 euros) e-commerce packages of Chinese origin enter the EU annually, roughly 12 million per day.
China’s share of the EU’s low-price e-commerce segment has reached 91%. Within EU e-commerce, the highest demand is in the clothing and footwear category at 40.31%, followed by consumer electronics and home decoration products.
In order to protect its domestic market and prevent tax losses, the European Union has tightened controls and taxation on e-commerce packages arriving from China. In February 2026, it narrowed the previously applied customs-free exemption for low-value packages and introduced stricter VAT requirements for e-commerce platforms, as well as compliance obligations under the DSA and GPSR. Although these legal regulations placed some downward pressure on China’s growth in the EU market (an estimated 3.2% drag on the annual compound growth rate), they proved insufficient to produce the effect the market expected. For this reason, the EU has increased its pressure on Chinese e-commerce platforms, strengthening import controls on goods from brands such as Temu and Shein and raising taxes on packages valued at under 150 euros.
As this new measure, even the EU’s introduction of a flat 3-euro tariff on packages previously falling below the 150-euro customs threshold failed to produce the desired effect, prompting a serious review of the business models of Chinese online retail giants AliExpress, Shein, and Temu, with the aim of exerting real impact on these platforms.
This is regarded as the latest step in the official proceedings initiated in 2024 over violations of the European Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commission has stated that it has formed the view that AliExpress failed to establish an effective system for detecting and removing products that do not comply with legal standards, and that the platform, taking advantage of delays and possible disruptions arising from the intensity of EU controls, treated the matter lightly.
According to the European Commission’s investigation, despite repeated EU warnings, AliExpress continued to host large quantities of illegal products, including dangerous toys and hazardous cosmetics, leading the Commission to conclude that the platform had exploited the EU’s understanding and approach. The Commission further stated that it had determined AliExpress failed to properly enforce its sanctions policy, allowing stores that sold illegal products to continue actively selling on the platform even after being penalised.
It was also emphasised that the platform’s brand authorisation system, intended to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods, had proven ineffective, as it was being circumvented to offer counterfeit products despite protective measures for brands and sellers, and that insufficient measures had been taken to prevent such abuse. Taking all of this into account, on Monday, July 20, the European Commission decided to impose a 550 million-euro fine on AliExpress, which has 193 million users, for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Prior to this new decision, at a session held before the European Parliament on March 23, experts from the Commission stated that following an examination of more than 30,000 products shipped by Shein, AliExpress, Temu, and Amazon, failure rates were found to be very high across many categories: 65% of cosmetics shipments, 60% of personal protective equipment shipments, and 63% of food supplement shipments were examined, and laboratory tests found health or safety risks in 81% of the products tested.
On the other hand, our country too is under trade pressure from China. According to recent statistics, the total foreign trade volume between Turkiye and China has reached approximately $ 53 billion. While Turkiye’s imports from China stand at roughly 49-50 billion dollars, our exports to China remain at 3.3-3.4 billion dollars. In light of these figures, Turkiye’s foreign trade deficit with China has risen above 46 billion dollars.
Within the framework of our Customs Union agreement with the EU, many countries with which we have signed FTAs, having increased their exports on the basis of the advantages Turkiye obtained under those FTAs, have unilaterally revised the agreements on the grounds that the trade balance had turned against them, and have imposed additional customs duties on Turkish-origin consumer goods. Many North African countries can be cited as examples of this.
It is inevitable that, in the long term, the unsustainable imbalance in our bilateral trade with China will have a significant negative impact on our medium-scale manufacturing SMEs, particularly those producing consumer goods. The number of retail chains selling extremely low-priced consumer goods, disconnected from any real cost logic, is increasing significantly across all our provinces, especially in shopping malls.
Although additional customs duties have been introduced for products entering the country via e-commerce by post, this has proven insufficient to curb the cost-detached pressure exerted by China and to restore balance in the domestic market.
Our current Customs Union agreement with the EU, based on Decision 1/95, directly enables Turkiye to adopt a common stance against third countries. It is important to emphasise this point, and it is legally possible for a similar process to be pursued in our own country, based on the laboratory examinations and assessments conducted by the European Commission’s SANCO and related units regarding third-country products.
It is considered an essential requirement that our Ministry of Trade effectively exercise its Market Surveillance and Inspection authority, that the relevant units under our jurisdiction, foremost among them the Turkish Standards Institute (TSE), which plays an active supervisory role in imports, evaluate the matter with the utmost care and fairness, that additional measures parallel to those of the EU be adopted without delay for the protection of both consumers and our SMEs against unfair competition, and that serious initiatives be undertaken to correct the otherwise inexplicable foreign trade deficit in our trade balance with China. It is likewise considered essential that the relevant provisions of the Customs Union Agreement No. 1/95 be evaluated in favor of our country, our consumers, and above all our medium-scale producers, and applied as a means of preventing unfair competition.