WEB AND MOBILE FRAUD
EU fines AliExpress €550m over illegal products on marketplace
The European Commission has fined AliExpress €550 million for breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA), stating that it failed to properly assess and reduce the risk of illegal, unsafe, and counterfeit products being sold on its platform.
The Commission said the online marketplace did not carry out adequate risk assessments and failed to implement effective measures to stop illegal products from being sold to consumers. It has also ordered the company to take corrective action.
According to the Commission, AliExpress overestimated the effectiveness of its systems for detecting and removing illegal products and did not allocate enough staff to review listings.
It also found that the platform failed to properly assess how its recommendation and advertising systems contributed to the spread of illegal goods, with Commission testing showing that many prohibited products continued to be recommended or advertised before being removed.
The Commission also criticised AliExpress for relying on limited performance metrics to measure the effectiveness of its moderation systems despite evidence that illegal products continued to appear on the platform.
It said the marketplace's systems to detect illegal products did not work effectively, allowing counterfeit goods, unsafe toys, and dangerous cosmetics to remain available for several weeks after being identified.
The investigation also found that AliExpress failed to properly enforce penalties against sellers offering illegal products, allowing some traders to continue operating despite repeated violations.
In addition, the Commission said sellers were able to bypass product compliance checks by placing items in incorrect categories, while AliExpress' brand authorisation system failed to prevent counterfeit products from being listed because it was understaffed and easy to circumvent.
The Commission said it calculated the fine based on the nature, seriousness, and duration of the breaches, which continued until at least June 2025, when it issued its preliminary findings. It added that it took into account the fact that the DSA is a new regulatory framework when determining the penalty.
AliExpress must submit an action plan by 20 October 2026 outlining how it will address the breaches. The European Board for Digital Services will review the plan before the Commission issues a final implementation timetable.
If AliExpress fails to comply with the decision, the Commission said it could impose periodic penalty payments.
The Commission opened its investigation into AliExpress in March 2024. In June 2025, it accepted a series of commitments from the company covering areas including advertising transparency, recommender systems and complaint handling, while continuing its investigation into the platform's handling of illegal products.
In March, the company told EU lawmakers that it intended to strengthen controls in order to comply with DSA regulations, but the move did not convince the Commission at the time, and has failed to prevent the fine from being levied.
“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,” said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy at the European Commission.
“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.”
