AliExpress Hit With €550 Million EU Fine Over Illegal Products
Why pay more when you can order cheaply from China: This is likely one of the most important success factors for Temu, Shein, and AliExpress. Now, the European Commission has imposed a fine of 550 million euros on the Chinese e-commerce platform AliExpress.
The accusation: The company violated central obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA) because it neither carefully assessed the risks surrounding the sale of illegal, unsafe, and counterfeit products on its platform nor effectively mitigated them. It is one of the highest fines imposed to date on the basis of the EU’s digital legislation.
The allegations in detail
The Commission accuses AliExpress of failures in two areas. Firstly, the platform did not properly assess the systemic risks of its services. For instance, the company did not realistically verify whether sufficient human moderators were available to monitor potentially illegal products—the effectiveness of its own detection systems was overestimated.
The question of how recommendation and advertising systems further exacerbate the distribution of illegal products was also insufficiently investigated. Tests by Commission departments showed that numerous illegal products were actively recommended to or advertised to consumers before being removed from the platform. Additionally, AliExpress relied on only a single quantitative indicator in its risk assessment, which could not reliably measure the reappearance of illegal products.
Secondly, AliExpress failed to effectively mitigate identified risks. According to the Commission, the system for detecting illegal products did not function properly: counterfeit goods, unsafe toys, and dangerous cosmetics circulated on the platform and, in some cases, remained online for weeks after being discovered. The policy of imposing sanctions on merchants selling illegal products was not consistently enforced—affected shops were able to remain active despite penalties. Furthermore, product compliance checks were easily bypassed by merchants intentionally listing their goods in incorrect categories with laxer requirements. The mandatory “brand authorization system,” intended to prevent the sale of counterfeits, was also deemed ineffective and understaffed by the Commission.
In calculating the fine, the Commission took into account the nature, severity, and duration of the violations, which persisted at least until June 2025. Mitigating factors included, among other things, the fact that the DSA is a relatively new law.
What comes next
AliExpress must now submit an action plan to the Commission by October 20, 2026, containing concrete measures to remedy the violations. The European Board for Digital Services will then have one month to issue a statement, after which the Commission will issue its final decision, including an implementation deadline. If AliExpress fails to comply with the decision, additional coercive fines may be imposed.
The proceedings have been ongoing since March 2024. In June 2025, the Commission accepted a series of commitments from AliExpress that cleared up most of the original concerns—for example, regarding reporting and remedy mechanisms as well as the transparency of advertising and recommendation systems. However, the points now being sanctioned regarding the assessment and mitigation of systemic risks were not covered by those commitments.
What is the Digital Services Act?
The Digital Services Act is the central EU regulatory framework for online platforms and has been fully in force since February 2024. It requires digital services to consistently combat illegal content and products, provide transparency regarding advertising and recommendation algorithms, and offer users effective complaint mechanisms. Particularly strict obligations apply to so-called “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs) with more than 45 million users in the EU—which includes AliExpress. These platforms must annually assess and actively mitigate the systemic risks of their services. In case of violations, the Commission can impose fines of up to six percent of the total worldwide annual turnover.
AliExpress is an online marketplace launched in 2010, through which primarily Chinese merchants sell products directly to end customers worldwide—ranging from electronics to clothing to cosmetics, mostly at very low prices. The platform belongs to the Alibaba Group, the Chinese tech giant co-founded by Jack Ma and headquartered in Hangzhou, which is listed on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges. In Europe, AliExpress has gained significant reach in recent years and competes there with other Chinese platforms such as Temu and Shein, which are also in the sights of EU regulators.
