EU Fines AliExpress a Record €550 Million Over Unsafe and Counterfeit Goods Under the Digital Services Act
The European Commission fined AliExpress €550 million for Digital Services Act failures tied to counterfeit and unsafe products, the largest DSA penalty issued so far.
Editor's Note ·
- Correction:
- The article states: "Euronews also reported that the Commission found AliExpress had underestimated the gap between its available human moderators and the scale of the workload, and had not adequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products." The recommender/advertising-systems finding does not appear in the cited Euronews article; it appears in The Register's reporting instead ("did not conduct an adequate assessment of how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products"). The fact is accurate and sourced, but was attributed to the wrong outlet.
- Correction:
- The Analysis section states the prior Digital Services Act fine against X was "€120 million," citing ABC News. The cited ABC News/AP report states the X fine was $120 million (US dollars), not €120 million. The Temu figure in the same sentence, €200 million, is correctly denominated per the same source.
Overview
The European Commission has fined AliExpress €550 million for breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA), according to the European Commission. The penalty, announced on July 20, 2026, is the largest ever fine issued under the Digital Services Act, surpassing the DSA fines previously levied against Temu (€200 million) and X (€120 million).
What We Know
The Commission’s formal proceedings against AliExpress began in 2024, and the conduct at issue continued until at least June 2025. According to the European Commission, AliExpress “failed to take effective measures to reduce the risk of dissemination of illegal products.”
The Register reported that the Commission’s findings included four specific failures: AliExpress’ system to detect illegal products did not work properly, the company did not properly enforce its penalty policy for traders selling illegal products, its product compliance checks could be easily circumvented through mis-categorisation, and it failed to adequately prevent the spread of counterfeit products.
According to Euronews, large volumes of illegal products — including unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics — circulated on the platform for weeks after being flagged, and AliExpress’ brand-authorization system, meant to prevent counterfeit sales, was found ineffective and insufficiently robust. Euronews also reported that the Commission found AliExpress had underestimated the gap between its available human moderators and the scale of the workload, and had not adequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products.
Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said in a statement carried by the European Commission: “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. 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.”
The DSA permits fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s global turnover. The Register noted that “the Act allows fines of up to six percent of global turnover and Alibaba Group’s annual revenue was $148 billion for the year ended March 31st,” meaning Brussels could theoretically have imposed a fine approaching $9 billion. Instead, the Commission set the penalty at €550 million after weighing what it described as “mitigating circumstances that operate in favor of AliExpress, such as the novelty of the Digital Services Act,” per The Register.
AliExpress must submit a corrective action plan to the Commission by October 20, 2026, which then has two months to decide whether further action is warranted.
In response, AliExpress said: “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.”
What We Don’t Know
Neither the Commission nor the outlets covering the decision have disclosed how many individual product listings or traders were implicated, or what specific remedial steps AliExpress’s action plan will need to include beyond the October 20 submission deadline. It is also not yet clear whether AliExpress will appeal the decision to the EU courts, given only that the company is “considering all available options,” as reported by Euronews.
Analysis
The fine extends a pattern of escalating Digital Services Act enforcement against Chinese-founded e-commerce platforms operating in the EU. With DSA penalties against Temu and X on the books at €200 million and €120 million respectively, per ABC News, the €550 million AliExpress fine marks a substantial jump in the scale of enforcement — even though, as the Commission itself acknowledged, it still falls well short of the roughly $9 billion ceiling the law would technically permit.