EU fines AliExpress €550M for DSA breaches over the sale of illegal products
The European Commission has imposed a €550 million fine on AliExpress for failing to stop the sale of illegal products on its online store.
According to the official press release, the Chinese online retailer wasn’t able to meet its obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products on its e-commerce platform.
For starters, AliExpress neglected to evaluate whether it had sufficient staff members to review potentially illegal products.
“The company overestimated the effectiveness of its system in detecting and removing illegal products. Therefore, AliExpress failed to realistically take into account the disproportion between the number of human moderators and their workload,” the European Commission concluded.
In addition, the automated systems failed to detect many illegal products, including counterfeit goods, unsafe toys, and dangerous cosmetics. Even when the systems did detect such products, they often remained online for weeks.
Sellers were also able to easily circumvent the detection systems by listing illegal products in the wrong category, where moderation policies were more lenient.
Lastly, AliExpress inadequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems intensified the distribution of illegal products.
All these violations combined made the European Commission decide to impose a fine of €550 million.
“Scale is not an excuse; risks must be identified and addressed systematically to ensure consumers can safely shop online. Today, we are holding AliExpress to this standard and request it to take action,” Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said in a statement.
An AliExpress spokesperson criticized the fine, claiming that it was excessive.
“We disagree with today’s decision and the disproportionate fine, which does not adequately reflect our established framework and the significant, proactive enhancements we have made. We are carefully reviewing the decision and considering all available options,” the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
AliExpress has until October 20th to submit an action plan to the European Commission. Failing to do so may lead to periodic penalty payments.
In May 2026, Temu was also fined for doing too little to prevent the sale of illegal products on its platform.