A Toys Industry Europe (TIE), study has revealed that a staggering  80% of toys sold by third-party sellers on online marketplaces do not meet EU safety standards and posed a danger to children.

According to TIE, the EU has the “strictest toy safety regime in the world” but toymakers from outside the bloc are exempt from EU rules when selling their products via online marketplaces.

In December, the EU’s General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) comes into effect, obliging sellers to provide details such as the manufacturer’s name, brand, postal and email address, and to designate a person responsible for the product within the bloc. But TIE says it will still not make online platforms legally liable for what they sell.

In an effort to highlight the current dangers, TIE, which represents toy manufacturers in the European Union and the United Kingdom, bought 102 toys from 10 marketplaces, including AliExpress, Amazon Marketplace, Shein, and Temu.

The latter three have been deemed Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) under the Digital Services Act (DSA), meaning they have to follow strict rules to ensure illegal goods are not sold on their platforms.

On Amazon, 10 out of 25 toys were dangerous, on Temu 19 out of 25, on Shein all 10 out of 10, and on AliExpress 10 out of 14. Meanwhile, on Cdiscount, Allegro, Fruugo, and Wish, all products were deemed unsafe.

The study discovered that the toys bought can break easily into small parts to cause a choking hazard while there were magnets that can perforate a child's intestines if swallowed, slime products with levels of boron – associated with reproductive health issues – over 13 times beyond the legal limit, and one toy with easily accessible batteries that can cause serious damage when ingested.

The report did not find significant differences between the number of toys not meeting EU standards in VLOPs and smaller platforms, such as the French platform Cdiscount.

TIE called on EU regulators to recognise online marketplaces as "economic operators" so that they are responsible for toys sold on their platform, fast-tracking EU Customs reform, which will ensure an entity is ultimately responsible for imports through the "deemed importer" concept.

They also called for better market surveillance and enforcement of the DSA. Lars Vogt, director of EU policy at TIE, said; "We would like the online marketplace facilitating the sale to become responsible for the safety, so the platform should be accountable.”

Six of the 10 online marketplaces studied, including Amazon, have signed the EU’s Product Safety Pledge, a voluntary commitment to ensure the safety of the goods sold on their platforms by third parties, TIE added, urging EU leaders to make such marketplaces legally responsible for the safety of products listed by third parties.

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