EU fines AliExpress €550 million for failing to prevent illegal goods

After fining Elon Musk’s X, Brussels is going after unsafe online practices by AliExpress, China’s rival to Amazon.

The European Commission has today issued a fine of €550 million against the Chinese e-commerce giant AliExpress for failing to "diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe or counterfeit products", according to the official press release. The company was found to be breaching its obligations under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA mandates that online platforms like AliExpress take measures to review potentially illegal products, and AliExpress apparently "overestimated the effectiveness of its system in detecting and removing illegal products"....

The online retailer allegedly breached the European Union's Digital Services Act, mainly through the spread of "counterfeit clothing" and "illegal and harmful products."

The European Commission has fined AliExpress more than $625 million, the largest penalty yet under the Digital Services Act, after finding that the marketplace failed to "diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products on its e-commerce platform." EU officials said flagged products repeatedly reappeared, sellers could evade safeguards, and AliExpress's recommendation and ad systems helped amplify dangerous goods. Ars Technica reports: For shady sellers, the risks of detection appeared low. The e-commerce site's mandatory brand authorization system was also ineffective and understaffed, the EC found, and AliExpress did not penalize traders for selling illegal products as its policy claims it would. Making things worse, AliExpress "inadequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products," the EC said. So rather than remove illegal products, AliExpress was recommending them to consumers and helping to maximize exposure. Talking to the press, the European Union's tech chief, Henna Virkkunen, noted that one in five Europeans shop monthly at retail sites like AliExpress, Temu, and Shein. AliExpress also relied on a single quantitative metric to gauge how effectively its systems were working to weed out illegal products. And that metric did not properly measure the extent of the harm. EC testing found that "a high volume of illegal products" -- including unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics -- "continued to circulate despite AliExpress' moderation efforts." In June 2025, AliExpress was ordered to bring its platform into compliance with the DSA but failed to make the necessary changes, the EC said. The fine was calculated to be proportionate to the nature of the violations, which the EC considered "particularly serious infringements," and to penalize AliExpress's delayed interventions to mitigate flagged risks. [...] AliExpress told Ars it was "surprised" by the "disproportionate" fine. AliExpress said it plans to appeal the decision, claiming the EC ignored its "sound risk management framework and the significant, proactive enhancements we have made." The massive online retailer noted that its EU market is substantially smaller than its China market and said that it invests "substantial resources in risk assessment and mitigation, product safety and consumer protection" and "has been and continues to be committed to meeting our obligations to consumers." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The penalty is the largest issued under the Digital Services Act, surpassing earlier fines against X and Temu