The European Commission has fined Chinese online retailer AliExpress a record €550m (£467m) for allowing the sale of illegal products, including unsafe toys and fake clothes, on its platform. The penalty, the highest imposed under the EU's Digital Services Act, follows a two-year investigation that found the company's detection systems "did not work properly," with many illegal products not flagged and others remaining on the site for weeks. The Commission also said AliExpress failed to properly enforce penalties on traders selling counterfeit goods and that its compliance checks could be "easily circumvented."
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said the spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and other illegal products "is not an unavoidable cost of shopping online - it is a failure by AliExpress to comply with its obligations." AliExpress, owned by Chinese tech conglomerate Alibaba and boasting 193 million users in Europe, said the fine was "disproportionate" and that it would appeal. The company added that it invests "substantial resources in risk assessment and mitigation, product safety and consumer protection" and that the decision ignores its "sound risk management framework."
“EU fines AliExpress record €550m for allowing unsafe toys and counterfeit clothes on its site.”
AliExpress must now pay the penalty and submit a plan by 20 October detailing how it will address the breaches. The Digital Services Act allows for fines of up to 6% of a company's revenue, but Alibaba's global turnover of €122bn last year means the penalty falls far short of that ceiling. Earlier this year, fellow Chinese retailer Temu was fined €200m for similar violations involving dangerous baby toys. Elon Musk's X was also fined €120m last year after the Commission found its paid blue tick badges deceptive, as the platform failed to verify users and exposed people to scams.