The European Commission has fined Chinese online retail platform AliExpress 550 million euros ($629 million) for failing to stop the sale of unsafe and counterfeit products on its site.
The fine, the biggest ever imposed for breaches of the 27-nation European Union’s Digital Services Act, comes just months after another online retailer, Temu, was fined 200 million euros for similar breaches. Last year, Brussels issued a $120 million penalty for Elon Musk’s social media site X.
The Digital Services Act is designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that’s either illegal or violates a platform’s terms of service, such as promotion of genocide or anorexia. It also looks to protect Europeans’ fundamental rights like privacy and free speech.
The newly imposed fine on AliExpress was for conduct by the company until at least June 2025, when the commission issued a preliminary ruling that found AliExpress was not doing enough to tackle the sale of illegal products under the DSA, and when it accepted commitments by AliExpress to improve its systems. The commission said that that AliExpress now has until Oct. 20 to submit an action plan setting out measures to “remedy the breach of its obligations to assess and mitigate systemic risks.”
The European Commission found that AliExpress did not have enough staff to assess the legality of products, sometimes giving them just “tens of seconds” to judge whether a product met EU standards.It also found many illegal products were being promoted under AliExpress’ recommendation systems and that the company’s internal risk assessments failed. “Many illegal products, from counterfeit products to unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics, circulated on the platform and, even if detected, remained online for multiple weeks,” the commission said.
Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s Executive Vice President for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a statement, “The spread of counterfeit 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.”
“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
While the fine was much larger than those previously issued under the DSA to Temu (€200m) and X (€120m), it represented less than 1% of the €122bn that AliExpress’s parent company, Alibaba, generated in revenue last year. It could have been fined a maximum of 6% of global annual revenue.
Temu was fined in May for failing to stop the sale of illegal and dangerous products, while X was fined for breaches including what the EU said was a “deceptive” blue tick verification badge given to users and the lack of transparency of the platform’s advertising. Temu is still under EU investigation on other issues and may yet face another fine.
Previous investigations by the EU of a sample of products sold on large retail platforms including Shein found that 65% of cosmetics, 63% of food supplements and 60% of personal protection equipment, such as hard hats and steel toe cap boots for building sites, were non-compliant.
Officials asserted that the fine was not a result of the discovery of illegal products on AliExpress but its failure to put in place barriers or mitigations that would have protected consumers from “illegal, non-compliant and counterfeit goods” which is illegal under EU law.
The European Commission said that after an investigation process lasting more than two years, the company was given the opportunity to rectify its compliance and risk procedures but failed to do so.
AliExpress Criticises EU Fine
AliExpress condemned the fine as “disproportionate.”
“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.”
AliExpress
AliExpress is the largest online retail operator in the EU with 193 million users, making it significantly bigger than Shein with 156 million and Temu with 130 million.
Today’s announcement in Brussels also comes less than three weeks after AliExpress’ operator, Chinese tech giant Alibaba, said it will pay $600 million to resolve a dispute with the U.S. government over allegations that the Hangzhou-based firm sold and imported illegal pharmaceuticals, controlled substances, regulated chemicals and pill-making equipment into the U.S.
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