French Government Urges Refashion to Penalize Ultra Fast Fashion Practices

France is continuing its offensive against ultra fast fashion. The Minister of Ecological Transition, Monique Barbut, has called on Refashion, the French collective system of extended producer responsibility (scrap), to submit proposals within six days to introduce new taxes on ultra-fast fashion companies.

Refashion, which is financed by companies that bring textiles into France on a volume basis, offers ecomodulations to brands on their payments based on their sustainable behavior. This could therefore be the route used by Refashion to respond to the French government’s requests.

Minister Monique Barbut has asked the agency to introduce a “penalty” taking into account the durability of textiles and footwear. If this mechanism is chosen, it will be necessary to introduce criteria that objectively measure durability, with which the French government seeks to penalize companies such as Shein or Temu.

Refashion could opt for ecomodulations to punish ultra-fast fashion activity

In 2025, France led the political opposition to the Shein and Temu model with a bill aimed at limiting the activity of these companies in the country. After its approval by the National Assembly, in June the French Senate almost unanimously ratified the document that aims to limit the placing on the market of new garments, with penalties of between seven euros and ten euros per product over the next few years.

Italy joined the French initiative months later. Parliament began debating in October the Italian version of the anti-Shein law, which also aims to regulate and limit the activity of large Asian operators that “are invading the European market with low-quality clothing, footwear and accessories with a short shelf life”.

These legislative initiatives come on top of many other legal setbacks and reprimands by European and U.S. authorities. In September, for example, France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (Cnil) fined Shein €150 million for improper use of cookies, which came on top of another €40 million penalty from the French competition authority for misleading discounts. In the United Kingdom, the British customs company IT Way Transgroup Clearance accused Shein of having manipulated customs declarations in order to avoid paying VAT on the products it brought into the United Kingdom.