The European Commission has fined AliExpress €550 million for failing to stop the sale of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit goods on its platform. The Commission ruled that the Chinese marketplace had broken its duties under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The penalty, announced on July 20, was the third issued under the DSA and the largest so far. It exceeded the €120 million imposed on Elon Musk’s X in December 2025 and the €200 million levied on rival Temu in May 2026.
The regulator said the newness of the DSA had counted as a mitigating factor, meaning the fine could have been steeper. Breaches of the rulebook can carry penalties of up to 6 per cent of a firm’s global annual turnover.
AliExpress had fallen short of its obligation to assess and reduce the risk of dangerous products reaching consumers, the Commission said. It found the company employed too few moderators for the volume of goods sold, letting harmful items reappear under similar listings.
Illegal products, including unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics, stayed on sale for weeks even after being flagged. The platform’s brand authorisation system, meant to block counterfeits, was ruled ineffective and easily bypassed.
Its recommendation and advertising tools promoted hazardous goods before they were withdrawn, according to the Commission. Sellers who broke the rules faced no effective sanction and were often left active on the site.
The sales were “very dangerous for consumers” and unfair to firms that followed the rules, Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, told reporters. She said one in five Europeans shopped at least monthly on AliExpress, Shein or Temu.
AliExpress has until October 20 to submit an action plan showing how it would address the concerns. The Commission would then decide whether the measures met the DSA or whether a larger fine should follow.
The company said the fine was “disproportionate” and did not reflect the improvements it had made. It would review the decision and weigh its options, it added.
The case dated back to March 2024, when Brussels opened a formal investigation into the low-cost marketplace over illegal goods, including fake medicines and the sale of pornographic material to minors. The platform had 193 million European users in 2025, more than rivals Shein and Temu.
