Overview
- Temu and Shein, which were analyzed in a Thursday study by IW Consult for Germany’s retail lobby HDE, were found to divert about €2.5 billion in annual sales from domestic shops and to have erased more than 40,000 jobs.
- The estimate draws on a February survey of 4,000 people that found 51% of users would have bought the same items elsewhere at the same price if the platforms were unavailable, with 19% willing to pay more.
- Using a retail-to-economy multiplier, the study puts the broader hit near €5 billion a year and says public budgets forgo roughly €420–429 million in taxes.
- EU measures are set to raise costs for low-value imports, with a €3 charge per parcel under €150 starting in July 2026 and an added processing fee from November 2026 to manage the flood of small packages.
- The scale of shipments is large, with HDE citing about 460,000 Temu and Shein parcels arriving in Germany each day in 2025, and German antitrust officials opened proceedings in October into Temu’s pricing rules for sellers.