On Friday, October 21, the Constitutional Council reported that French authorities confirmed the effectiveness of severe sanctions imposed on the affordable shopping platform Wish at the end of 2021: The Wish e-commerce site confirmed its exclusion from the regional Google and Apple app stores in France and can only be used by consumers in web searches. Wish tried and failed to file a first appeal with the Paris Administrative Court before filing a constitutionality priority issue (QPC) in July on the grounds of freedom of speech and enterprise. It was at this QPC that the Constitutional Council had just delivered its verdict.
France chose to sanction Wish after a public investigation by the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) in 2020, mainly due to the high proportion of fakes listed on the site. In particular, some goods “bear logos and distinctive marks similar to well-known registered trademarks”, and 90 per cent of electrical appliances sampled and inspected were considered dangerous, as were 62 per cent of clothing jewellery and 45 per cent of toys.
After notifying the platform of the illegal nature of the items, the DGCCRF noted that the products, once notified of their removal, often quickly reappeared under another name. The DGCCRF ordered Wish to comply, ultimately concluding that Wish had not given a “satisfactory response” as a precondition for the November 2021 sanction. Wish’s sales have also faltered and the app has now been removed from the Google and Apple App stores in France, but the portal can still be accessed in France by searching the domain name on the Internet.