European Commission news and archive

Why fast fashion 'recycling' is not saving the planet

In H&M's flagship Paris store it is hard to find clothes that don't claim to be made from "recycled materials". Last year, 79 percent of the polyester in its collections came from recycled materials, and next year it wants it all to be recycled. The Swedish fast fashion giant told AFP that recycled material allows the "industry to reduce its...

Fashion

European Social Innovation Competition to award 150,000 EUR to sustainable fashion ideas

The 2020 edition of the European Social Innovation Competition, a prize established eight years ago by the European Commission, will be focusing on sustainable fashion innovations. Under the name Reimagine Fashion: Changing behaviours for sustainable fashion, this year’s competition is looking for projects aiming to change the ways clothes are...

Retail

Visa & Mastercard to cut fees on payments made with foreign credit cards in Europe

The European Commission has accepted an offer by Visa and Mastercard to significantly reduce the fee European retailers need to pay to the cardholder’s bank when a tourist or online shopper makes a payment using a credit card issued outside the bloc. Known as Inter-regional interchange fees or inter-regional MIFs, these fees will now be reduced...

Business

European Commission hits Google with 1.5 billion EUR fine

1.49 billion euros: that’s how much the European Commission has fined Google for breaching EU antitrust rules one more time. According to the Commission, Google forced its AdSense clients to sign contracts prohibiting them from accepting advertising from rival search engines. Commenting on the fine, commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of...

Business

European Commission investigates Nike’s tax status in the Netherlands

The European Commission has launched an in-depth investigation into Nike’s tax arrangements in the Netherlands, looking to examine whether the country’s tax administration body, Belastingdienst, has given the sportswear giant an unfair advantage over its competitors. Between 2006 and 2015, Dutch authorities issued five tax rulings, two of which...

Fashion Featured

European Commission fines Guess almost 40 million euros in new crusade against online distribution restrictions

Brussels - On 17 December 2018, the European Commission fined the clothing company Guess 39.8 million euros for infringing EU antitrust rules by imposing restrictions on retailers’ ability to compete online. Concerns included ‘geo-blocking’ (i.e., restrictions on the EU territories into which retailers were allowed to sell Guess products),...