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Italy | Competition authority fines fashion giant €1 million over greenwashing

Rebecca May

1 min read

A photo of a person's hands opening a package which contains clothes that have been ordered online

Reuters | Italy’s competition authority (AGCM) has announced a €1 million fine on Chinese fast fashion online retailer Shein for misleading customers on the environmental impact of its products.

The fine was imposed on Infinite Styles Services CO. Limited, a Dublin-based company that operates Shein’s website in Europe, at the end of a “greenwashing” investigation that the Italian watchdog had opened in September 2024.

AGCM said the environmental sustainability and social responsibility claims promoted on Shein’s website “were sometimes vague, generic, and/or overly emphatic, and in other cases omitted and misleading.”

The Italian authority said its assessment was influenced by an “increased duty of care” falling on Shein, “because it operates in (the) highly polluting sector and with highly polluting methods” of fast and super-fast fashion.

– Accurate at time of publication | August 2025

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