The European Commission has fined e-commerce giant AliExpress $600 million (€550 million) for breaching rules aimed at protecting consumers from illegal, unsafe and counterfeit goods sold online.
Announcing the decision, Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, said the case underscored that major platforms cannot treat harmful products as an inevitable part of online retail.
Among the concerns highlighted was the platform’s reliance on insufficient moderation resources, with investigators finding a mismatch between the volume of listings and the capacity to review them effectively. The Commission also found that AliExpress overestimated the effectiveness of its automated systems designed to detect and remove illegal items.
Testing carried out by EU officials indicated that unsafe or counterfeit goods were still being recommended and advertised to users, even after being flagged. In some cases, products remained available for weeks before being removed.
The investigation also pointed to weak enforcement against sellers who breached the rules. Traders offering illegal or counterfeit goods were often able to continue operating despite penalties. In addition, some sellers were found to have circumvented safeguards by deliberately miscategorising products, allowing them to bypass stricter compliance checks.
The Commission said AliExpress’s existing systems to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods, including its “brand authorisation” process, were ineffective and insufficiently staffed, enabling problematic listings to persist on the platform.
The fine takes into account the seriousness and duration of the breaches, which extended until at least June 2025. However, regulators noted that the relatively recent introduction of the DSA was considered a mitigating factor when determining the penalty.
AliExpress has been given until Oct. 20 to submit an action plan detailing how it will address the failings identified by the Commission. The plan will be reviewed by EU regulators before a final compliance deadline is set.
Failure to implement the required changes could lead to further financial penalties, including periodic fines.
The case is one of the most significant enforcement actions and the largest fine under the DSA to date, signalling the EU’s willingness to impose substantial penalties on large digital platforms that fail to protect users from harm.
This fine is significantly higher than the €120 million fine imposed on Elon Musk's social media platform X last December, as well as the €200 million fine handed to Temu this May—both of which were also issued for violating the DSA.