Agency says the company failed to comply with obligations established by the Digital Services Law
The European Commission announced this Monday (20.Jul.2026) that it had fined AliExpress 550 million euros for failing to comply with obligations established by the DSA (Digital Services Law). In a note, the agency said that the company failed to “diligently assess and mitigate risks related to the sale of illegal, unsafe or counterfeit products” on your e-commerce platform.
The investigation identified 2 main groups of violations: inadequate assessment of systemic risks and the inability to contain the circulation of illegal products on the platform. The European Commission has ordered AliExpress to take corrective measures.
When it comes to risk assessment, the European Commission said that AliExpress overestimated the effectiveness of the moderation system itself.
“AliExpress did not realistically take into account the disproportion between the number of human moderators and their workload”declared the European body.
The company “inadequately assessed how its recommendation and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products”.
Tests carried out by the European Commission showed that illegal products were recommended or shown in advertisements to consumers before being removed. The platform also relied on just one quantitative indicator, insufficient to measure the real effectiveness of the moderation system.
Regarding containment measures, the Commission indicated the following flaws:
- the illegal product detection system did not work properly. Items such as counterfeit products, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics remained in the air for weeks even after being identified;
- the penalty system for sellers who sold irregular products was not rigorously applied, allowing fined stores to remain active on the platform.
- product miscategorization was used as a loophole by sellers who deliberately classified products in the wrong category to benefit from more flexible compliance requirements;
- AliExpress allocated insufficient staff to verify categorizations before publication;
- the company failed to adequately prevent the spread of counterfeit products. According to the European Commission, in addition to the possible harm to consumer rights, “sellers of these products harm legitimate companies that invest in design, safety testing and innovation”.
The Commission said it calculated the fine based on the nature of the infractions, their severity in relation to affected users in the European Union and the duration of the irregularities, which extended at least until June 2025, when preliminary findings were communicated to AliExpress.
“The proliferation of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and other illegal and harmful products is not an inevitable cost of online shopping, it is a failure by AliExpress to meet its obligations under the Digital Services Act”said Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the European Commission.
“Scale is no excuse; risks must be identified and addressed systematically to ensure consumers can shop online safely. Today, we are holding AliExpress accountable to this standard and asking it to take action”he declared.
The formal investigation was opened on March 14, 2024. On June 18, 2025, the European Commission accepted a series of commitments offered by AliExpress to address part of the concerns that motivated the process, such as content notification and removal mechanisms and transparency in advertising and recommendation systems.
On the same date, preliminary conclusions of non-compliance on the assessment and mitigation of systemic risks were adopted, the 2 points not covered by the commitments and which are the basis for the fine of 550 million euros.
Next steps
AliExpress has until October 20th to present an action plan to the European Commission with measures to remedy the identified violations. The European Digital Services Council will have 1 month, from receipt of the plan, to express its opinion.
The European Commission will have another 1 month to adopt the final decision and establish a reasonable deadline for implementation.
Failure to comply with the decision may result in periodic penalty payments. The European Commission stated that it will continue to engage with AliExpress to ensure compliance with the decision and the DSA.
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Source: https://www.poder360.com.br/poder-internacional/comissao-europeia-multa-aliexpress-em-550-milhoes-de-euros/
