Sanaa: The European Commission on Monday fined Chinese e-commerce platform AliExpress pound 550 million ($628 million) for violating the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to adequately assess and mitigate the risks associated with the sale of illegal, unsafe, and counterfeit products.
According to Anadolu Agency, the EU Commission stated that AliExpress overestimated the effectiveness of its systems for detecting and removing illegal listings and failed to allocate sufficient human moderators to review potentially unlawful products. The platform also inadequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems contributed to the dissemination of illegal goods.
Testing by the bloc revealed that many illegal products continued to be recommended or advertised to consumers before being removed. The EU Commission noted that AliExpress relied on insufficient quantitative indicators to measure the effectiveness of its moderation systems, resulting in a high volume of illegal products remaining available despite enforcement efforts.
Several shortcomings were identified, including ineffective systems for detecting illegal products, weak enforcement against traders repeatedly selling prohibited goods, and insufficient checks to prevent sellers from circumventing product compliance rules through miscategorization. The EU Commission also found that AliExpress failed to prevent the sale of counterfeit products effectively, as its mandatory brand authorization system was understaffed and easily bypassed by traders.
In determining the penalty, the bloc considered the seriousness and duration of the infringements, as well as the number of affected users across the European Union. AliExpress has been given until October 2026 to submit an action plan outlining how it will comply with the EU Commission's decision.
The bloc initiated formal proceedings against AliExpress in March 2024 to investigate potential breaches of the DSA, including its handling of systemic risks, content moderation, advertising transparency, trader traceability, and access to data for researchers.