While a European tax on small Chinese packages had slowed imports, France has opted to introduce a penalty on each ultra-fast fashion product, of the Shein type, potentially reaching up to 19.50 euros more for a jacket by 2030.
“There is urgency to act quickly on ultra-fast fashion,” said Monday the office of the Minister for the Ecological Transition during a press briefing aimed at dissecting the provisions of the anti-fast fashion law adopted by Parliament this summer.
One of its flagship measures, the financial penalty on disposable fashion garments, comes into effect on Tuesday.
Among the players are the high-end French brand Ba&sh, the northern retailer Kiabi, the Spanish fast fashion specialist Zara, and the Asian pioneer of ultra-ephemeral fashion Shein, with “differences in scale that are extremely significant,” according to the cabinet.
Ba&sh places around 300 different products on shelves per year, Kiabi 17,400, Zara about 20,000, but Shein “exceeds 1.7 million references,” the office of Mathieu Lefèvre quantified.
Those figures alarm public authorities, associations, and lawmakers in France but also in Europe, who accuse these large platforms (including Chinese Temu and AliExpress) of environmental pollution given the volumes placed on the market, as well as unfair competition against European companies, or even of forced labor in factories in the Middle Kingdom.
Shein, for its part, did not wish to comment, while Temu and AliExpress had not reacted immediately.
Starting Tuesday, a financial penalty will apply to each product that a sophisticated calculation will classify as ultra-ephemeral fashion.
Each garment will have a score, the product of an equation between the volumes of clothing placed on the market by the company and the incentive to repair (a coefficient relating the product’s price to what repairing it would cost).
For example, in 2026, the companies concerned will pay a 50-cent penalty for each pair of underwear whose score falls below the established threshold, and 2 euros for a T-shirt, 9 euros for jeans, and 12 euros for a jacket.
This penalty is planned to reach up to 19.50 euros per item in 2030, with a cap at 50% of the pre-tax price.
It will be collected by the eco-organization Refashion, mandated by the State to structure the textile sector. A technological tool enabling data collection — not merely relying on company declarations — is being developed, Lefèvre’s office explained.
In July, the same office had stated that the penalty would not affect so-called fast-fashion companies such as Primark, Zara, Uniqlo, or H&M.
