AliExpress has been fined €550 million by the European Commission for breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act over how it assessed and reduced risks linked to illegal, unsafe or counterfeit goods sold on its platform.
The Digital Services Act, known as the DSA, is an EU law that sets rules for online platforms, including requirements to identify and tackle certain system-wide risks, the Commission noted in a release on Monday.
It said AliExpress failed to properly assess whether it had enough staff to review potentially illegal products and overestimated how well its systems detected and removed them.
It also did not adequately assess how its recommender and advertising systems could increase the spread of illegal products, with Commission testing finding many illegal items were recommended or advertised to consumers before they were effectively removed.
AliExpress relied on a single quantitative indicator that did not properly measure how well its moderation system prevented illegal products appearing or reappearing in similar forms, while Commission testing found a high volume of illegal products continued to circulate despite moderation efforts.
Unsafe toys, counterfeit goods and ‘dangerous cosmetics’
The Commission said AliExpress did not take effective measures to reduce the risk of illegal products being sold, citing examples including counterfeit goods, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics.
Many illegal products remained online for multiple weeks even when detected.
The company also did not properly enforce penalties for traders selling illegal products, meaning stores could remain active despite being penalised.
AliExpress’ product compliance checks could be bypassed by mis-categorising goods, with the Commission saying the platform had insufficient staff to verify whether products were correctly categorised and that controls failed to detect mis-categorised products before publication.
AliExpress’ mandatory “brand authorisation” system intended to prevent counterfeit sales was ineffective and understaffed, allowing traders to bypass it and publish products later removed for being counterfeit.
The fine took account of the nature of the infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users, and their duration, which ran at least until June 2025 when the Commission issued preliminary findings against AliExpress.
AliExpress has until 20 October 2026 to submit an action plan setting out how it will remedy the breach, and failure to comply may lead to periodic penalty payments.
