Denmark Mulls Blocking Amazon Over Sale of Dangerous Products

(Bloomberg) -- Denmark plans to block the websites of Amazon.com Inc. and other online retailers if they don’t do more to stop the sale of dangerous products on their platforms.

The Danish parliament passed legislation on Thursday making it possible to lock out the retailers if they fail to abide by product safety rules in the European Union. The first course of action would be fines, before blocking websites; the new legislation allows for larger penalties than previously.

“There simply cannot be an opportunity to earn money on selling life-threatening goods,” Business Minister Simon Kollerup said in a statement.

Denmark is cracking down on the sale of dangerous products such as mobile phone chargers that can explode into flames after an investigation found such items were easy to get. Denmark’s Chamber of Commerce found 42 of 50 products purchased on the platforms Wish, Amazon and AliExpress were so unsafe that authorities had put out warnings on them.

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