EU Fines AliExpress a Record $629 Mn Over Illegal, Counterfeit Goods
The Alibaba-owned marketplace has until October 20 to propose remedies after regulators found that weak detection and seller controls left dangerous products online for weeks
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The European Union has fined Alibaba’s AliExpress €550 Mn ($629 Mn) for failing to control the sale of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit goods. It is the largest penalty imposed under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
The European Commission said the failures extended across AliExpress’s marketplace operations, from the number of people assigned to review risks to the systems used to detect illegal listings, recommend products and penalise offending sellers. Consequently, counterfeit goods, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics remained available for weeks.
AliExpress must submit proposed remedial measures by October 20. The Commission will assess the plan in December and may impose further penalties if it concludes that the company has not brought its operations into compliance.
Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is very dangerous for consumers, unfair for companies which are complying with all our rules,” said EU technology chief Henna Virkkunen.
The penalty marks the EU’s most forceful use of the DSA against an online marketplace to date. It is more than twice the €200 Mn fine imposed on Temu in May this year and more than four times the €120 Mn penalty handed to Elon Musk’s X in December 2025. It is the third fine issued by the Commission under the law.
The EU’s DSA Fines So Far
| Platform | Date | Fine | Key Violations |
| X | December 2025 | €120 Mn | Deceptive use of its blue checkmark, lack of transparency in its advertising repository and failure to provide researchers access to public data |
| Temu | May 2026 | €200 Mn | Failure to diligently identify, analyse and assess systemic risks from illegal products, including how recommendation systems and influencer promotions could amplify those risks |
| AliExpress | July 2026 | $629 Mn (€550 Mn) | Failure to adequately assess and mitigate illegal-product risks, including insufficient moderation resources, weak detection systems and ineffective controls against offending sellers and counterfeit goods |
Source: European Commission, Reuters
AliExpress had 193 Mn users in Europe last year, compared with 156 Mn for Shein and 130 Mn for Temu. One in five Europeans said they shopped from one of the three platforms at least once a month, according to Virkkunen.
The Commission found that AliExpress had not properly determined whether it had sufficient employees to assess the risks posed by illegal products. The company also overstated the ability of its systems to detect and remove prohibited listings.
Regulators criticised AliExpress for relying on a single quantitative indicator to evaluate its moderation system, leaving it ill-equipped to identify products that had disappeared and subsequently returned in slightly altered forms.
The platform’s recommendation and advertising systems further increased the visibility of illegal goods, according to the Commission. Its enforcement policy was also ineffective, allowing sellers that had already been penalised to continue offering prohibited products.
AliExpress’s mandatory “brand authorisation” programme, intended to prevent the sale of counterfeits, was understaffed and could be easily circumvented by traders selling fake goods, the regulator found.
The DSA places additional obligations on platforms with more than 45 Mn users in the EU, requiring them to identify systemic risks and show that they have taken effective steps to reduce them. Companies can be fined up to 6% of their worldwide annual turnover for breaching the law.
The AliExpress investigation began in March 2024. In June 2025, the Commission preliminarily found that the platform had underestimated the risks associated with illegal products and had failed to enforce sanctions against traders offering prohibited goods.
The regulator separately accepted legally binding commitments from AliExpress covering other parts of the investigation, including advertising transparency, recommendation systems, trader traceability and mechanisms for reporting illegal products. Those commitments did not resolve risk assessment and mitigation failures that led to Monday’s fine.
The Commission said the DSA’s relative novelty was treated as a mitigating factor in calculating the penalty, indicating that the fine could otherwise have been higher.
Shein, another Chinese-founded ecommerce platform with a large European customer base, remains under investigation over issues including illegal products, service design and transparency in recommendation systems.
With inputs from Reuters, European Commission
The European Union has fined Alibaba’s AliExpress €550 Mn ($629 Mn) for failing to control the sale of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit goods. It is the largest penalty imposed under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
The European Commission said the failures extended across AliExpress’s marketplace operations, from the number of people assigned to review risks to the systems used to detect illegal listings, recommend products and penalise offending sellers. Consequently, counterfeit goods, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics remained available for weeks.
AliExpress must submit proposed remedial measures by October 20. The Commission will assess the plan in December and may impose further penalties if it concludes that the company has not brought its operations into compliance.
