The European Commission has fined AliExpress a record €550m (£470m) for failing to prevent illegal, counterfeit and unsafe goods from being sold through its platform – the largest penalty yet issued under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
The fine, announced on 20th July, follows an investigation spanning more than two years. Regulators concluded that AliExpress had not done enough to identify and remove non-compliant products and had been given an opportunity to bring its procedures up to standard during the process but failed to do so.
The DSA, which came into force in 2024, requires large platforms to systematically identify and address risks to consumers. AliExpress is the EU’s largest online retailer by user base, with 193 million active users – ahead of Shein at 156 million and Temu at 130 million.
The commission found that product reviewers were sometimes given as little as “tens of seconds” to assess whether a listing met EU safety standards, pointing to serious understaffing in the moderation process. Illegal products – including counterfeit fashion items, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and harmful kitchen gadgets – were also being surfaced through the platform’s own recommendation systems. Items flagged as non-compliant sometimes remained online for several weeks and millions of products reappeared after being identified as illegal. Sellers were found to be circumventing controls by, for example, miscategorising counterfeit branded goods as unbranded items.
Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, was direct in her assessment. “The spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and other illegal and harmful products is not an unavoidable cost of shopping online – it is a failure by AliExpress to comply with its obligations under the Digital Services Act,” she said.
Although the fine exceeds those previously levied against Temu (€200m) and X (€120m), it still represents less than 1% of the €122bn in revenue that AliExpress’s parent company, Alibaba, reported last year. The maximum permissible penalty under the DSA stands at 6% of global annual revenue.
AliExpress rejected the ruling, calling the fine “disproportionate” and arguing it did not reflect the improvements the company said it had proactively made. The firm confirmed it was reviewing the decision and considering its options.
Temu remains under a separate EU investigation and may yet face further penalties.
