According to foreign media reports, the European Commission has imposed a €550 million ($630 million) fine on AliExpress, the cross-border e-commerce platform owned by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The penalty marks the largest enforcement action since the Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force in 2022, targeting the platform’s long-standing failures to curb counterfeit, unsafe, and non-compliant products.
The fine follows a dedicated investigation launched by the European Commission in March last year. Regulators found that AliExpress hosted a number of products that failed to comply with the EU’s safety and environmental standards, including high-risk categories such as substandard toys and non-compliant cosmetics. Additionally, investigators identified systemic shortcomings in the platform’s enforcement mechanisms.
Illegal listings often remained online for weeks before being removed, while recommendation algorithms continued promoting violating products prior to their takedown. In addition, insufficient staffing in the brand authorization review process rendered verification largely ineffective, allowing sellers to circumvent oversight and repeatedly relist products that had previously been removed.
European Commissioner for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen said the penalty is intended to compel the platform to systematically address online consumer safety risks. The size of the fine reflects the nature of the violations, their prolonged duration, and their impact on approximately 193 million users across the European Union. [TechWeb, in Chinese]
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