Justice has ruled. After an attempt by the ecommerce site to have its delisting canceled, Wish will remain banned from Google France until further notice.
Hard blow for Wish. A few weeks ago, the Chinese ecommerce site was dereferenced from search engines, but also from French application stores at the request of the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) . A first decision that the company had contested, by filing an appeal against the Ministry of the Economy and Finance. It is finally at the end of a second study of the file thate the judge upheld the sanctions against Wish, which will remain dereferenced from French search engines.
What does the DGCCRF reproach Wish for?
Despite Wish’s attempt to have its delisting canceled, the judge in charge of the case dismissed the Chinese platform on Friday, December 17, stressing that the site still did not respect the injunctions formulated by Bercy. Accused of selling dangerous or simply illegal products, the company is now considering appealing the decision. In particular, she let it be known through a press release that the sanction pronounced by the DGCCRF represented “An illegal action which goes far beyond the prerogatives of any market surveillance authority”.
It must be said that the two parties are having a hard time getting along. While the administrative court relies on Article L. 521-3-1 of the Consumer Code to argue for the immediate delisting of Wish for “Serious harm to the fairness of transactions or to the interests of consumers”, the company argued “The freedom of enterprise guaranteed by the provisions of article 4 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”. A law however rejected by the authorities, who now expect the site to look more closely at the goods passing through its marketplace. For his part, Wish defends its lack of control by evoking its simple status as a distributor, and not a host. An argument which, again, does not pass for the administrative tribunal.
While waiting for Wish’s counter-attack, the site will therefore remain at a standstill in France. IOS and Android apps have been removed from Apple and Google’s online stores. They are still accessible, but a message indicates that it is impossible to download them. Also on search engines, the platform no longer appears. However, it is still possible to access it by typing the site URL directly from the navigation bar.
