Adevinta general marketplace LeBonCoin, second-hand fashion marketplace Vinted and e-commerce unicorn Ankorstore have joined marketplaces industry group l’Alliance Française des Places de Marché (AFPDM), according to a press release. The AFPDM was founded in October 2022 by BackMarket, eBay, Etsy, ManoMano and Rakuten.
“After the initial phase of launching and setting up our internal organization, we are very happy to welcome these three big names among us. The AFPDM thus confirms its relevance and takes on a new dimension that will help it to better project itself into the public debate and work for the virtuous development of e-commerce,” said AFDPM president Sébastien Duplan, who is head of public affairs at ManoMano.
According to the AFPDM, its members “are committed to promoting a set of virtuous practices for marketplaces … and to make their contribution to the challenges of sustainable development and the circular economy, in partnership with the authorities.”
“Faced with a regulatory framework that is being redefined,” two issues are currently of particularly salience to the lobby group. These are Le loi relative à la lutte contre le gaspillage et à l’économie circulaire (AGEC — the law relating to the circular economy and the fight against waste) and the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). This is already in place for large marketplaces and will be implemented for all marketplaces in February 2024.
Based on the principle that the polluter pays, the AGEC makes manufacturers responsible for the end of life of goods in certain sectors. As such, they are required to include waste prevention and management costs in their pricing and pay an eco tax that will be used to finance various circular economy measures. However, platforms and marketplaces are required to assume these responsibilities in the event of default by sellers.
“At ManoMano, we have 5,000 sellers on our platform and 16 million SKUs. We are faced with volumes that make generalized monitoring impossible, which has repercussions for all of the company’s functions. You cannot be an intermediary and have responsibility for the content, otherwise you are no longer an intermediary,” Duplan told media.
A myriad of changes are planned under the DSA, including “measures to counter illegal goods, services or content online,” “new traceability obligations for business users” and “transparency measures for online platforms that are wide-ranging, including the algorithms used for recommendation,” according to an EU website dedicated to the subject.