Alibaba’s online shopping platform AliExpress has been hit with a record-breaking €550 million fine — equivalent to approximately $629 million — by European Union regulators for failing to prevent illegal, unsafe, and counterfeit products from being sold through its marketplace.
The European Commission announced the penalty on Monday, marking the third fine ever issued under the EU’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping law that requires major online platforms to take stronger action against illegal and harmful content.
Regulators first formally charged AliExpress back in June of last year, accusing the company of failing to meet a core requirement of the Digital Services Act: properly assessing and reducing the risk of illegal products spreading across its platform.
AliExpress has until October 20 to put forward corrective measures. If the European Commission determines in December that those measures fall short of DSA standards, the company could face yet another round of financial penalties.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen addressed reporters on the matter, saying, “This is very dangerous for consumers, unfair for companies which are complying with all our rules.”
Virkkunen also highlighted the sheer scale of AliExpress’s European presence, noting the platform had 193 million users across Europe last year. By comparison, Shein had 156 million users and Temu had 130 million. Temu has previously been fined under the Digital Services Act, while Shein is currently under investigation. “One in five Europeans say they shop once a month from Shein, Temu and AliExpress,” Virkkunen added.
Alibaba had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
According to the Commission, AliExpress failed to adequately determine whether it had sufficient staff to review potential risks and overestimated how well its own systems were working to detect and remove prohibited items. Regulators also criticized the platform’s recommendation and advertising tools for making the spread of illegal products worse, and took issue with the company relying on a single measurement to gauge the effectiveness of its content moderation efforts.
Because AliExpress was not catching illegal products effectively, items ranging from counterfeit goods to unsafe children’s toys and potentially dangerous cosmetics were left available on the platform for weeks at a time, the Commission said.
Regulators also found fault with the company’s penalty system for rule-breaking sellers, saying it was ineffective and allowed penalized vendors to keep selling prohibited items. Additionally, the Commission said AliExpress’s so-called “brand authorisation” program — designed to prevent counterfeit sales — was understaffed, poorly run, and easily bypassed by sellers peddling fake merchandise.
Despite the size of the fine, regulators noted that the relative newness of the Digital Services Act was taken into account as a mitigating factor, meaning the penalty could have been even steeper.
The €550 million fine dwarfs previous DSA penalties. Elon Musk’s social media platform X was fined €120 million in December of last year, and Temu was ordered to pay €200 million in May of this year — both for Digital Services Act violations.
It’s worth noting that AliExpress previously avoided a fine last June — which could have reached as high as 6% of its total global annual revenue — after agreeing to take steps to address the spread of potentially illegal and adult content on its platform.
