Harmful consumer products continue to be sold online for years, even when official warnings have been issued by the European Union. The German Consumer Association (Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband or VZBV) analyzed the EU database, which requires online marketplaces to document the removal of products.
According to the VZBV’s evaluation, the five largest shopping platforms in Germany removed nearly 70 million items through the database alone in November 2025, as cited in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”‘s Monday edition. Of these removals, an estimated 30 million items were classified as either “unsafe” or “banned”.
Despite the scale of removals, the VZBV notes that cross-referencing the data from the EU database remains incomplete. This gap in monitoring means that dangerous products are continuing to appear in online trade. Consequently, the VZBV is demanding a stricter policy: unsafe products should not be allowed to enter the online market in the first place.
