The European Commission accepted a Temu action plan on 26 October 2026, giving the online marketplace a chance to show that it can curb illegal products under the Digital Services Act. The decision follows a non-compliance finding from May 2026, when the Commission fined the platform 200 million euros for failing to meet its risk assessment duties.

The Temu action plan sets out measures that the platform must carry out to fix the breach. Temu has to produce a risk analysis specific to its own service, and it has to build reliable metrics that show whether its mitigation steps reduce the spread of illegal content. It must also assess the limits of its content moderation and check whether its recommender systems may amplify illegal goods.

A further element targets deliberate abuse. The plan requires Temu to examine intentional manipulation and amplification of illegal listings, including cases in which sellers exploit features of the platform. This matters because a marketplace that ranks and promotes products through algorithms can turn a few bad listings into thousands of views before a moderator reacts.

The calendar is short. Temu has four months to carry out an interim risk assessment that covers a six-month period, with a deadline of 30 November 2026. The Commission will use that report to check whether the Temu action plan works in practice, so the document will matter as much as the plan itself.

The Temu action plan shows how the Digital Services Act works for very large platforms. The law lets the Commission fine a company up to 6% of its global annual turnover, and the 200 million euro penalty in May shows that Brussels is willing to use that power. Accepting the plan does not close the matter, since it moves the file from punishment to supervised repair, and the Commission can still judge compliance by the results.

Consumers and rival sellers both have a stake. Shoppers expect that unsafe or banned goods will not appear in search results, while legitimate European merchants complain when rule-breaking competitors undercut them. The Commission’s press release, numbered IP/26/1178, does not cite specific articles of the regulation in the coverage reviewed, so the legal detail will emerge only in the formal documents.

Open questions remain around the Temu action plan. The sources reviewed do not describe any further penalties, and they do not explain how the Commission will verify the metrics that Temu proposes. Regulators in the member states, who handle consumer complaints and product safety checks on the ground, will watch the interim assessment closely.

The next few weeks will show whether the Temu action plan changes behaviour or only adds paperwork. If the interim assessment due by 30 November 2026 shows falling numbers of illegal listings and credible metrics, the Commission will have a model for other platforms, and if it does not, the Digital Services Act toolbox still contains further enforcement steps.