AliExpress hit with record €625M EU fine under the Digital Services Act

The European Commission has slapped AliExpress with the largest fine to date under the Digital Services Act (DSA) — more than $625 million. In the regulator's words, the platform failed to “diligently assess and mitigate the risks linked to the sale of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products.”

What the complaints are

According to the commission, AliExpress not only failed to devote enough staff to removing dangerous and fake products but effectively made life easier for bad-faith sellers. Moderators, as The Guardian reports, were sometimes given only “tens of seconds” to judge whether a flagged item complied with EU rules. As a result, millions of products that had been pulled from sale reappeared on the storefront — sometimes for more than a month.

Getting around the safeguards proved easy: to dodge an automatic block, a seller only had to list the wrong category, one that required fewer checks. The mandatory brand-authorization system worked poorly, and the penalties against sellers of illegal goods promised in the rules never actually materialized.

Separately, the regulator noted that the platform's recommendation and advertising mechanisms only made the spread of banned goods worse: instead of removing them, AliExpress promoted them to shoppers. According to EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen, one in five Europeans shops each month on platforms like AliExpress, Temu and Shein.

The company gauged the effectiveness of its systems by a single quantitative metric that did not reflect the real scale of the harm. The commission's tests showed that “a large volume of illegal products” — including unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics — kept circulating despite moderation.

The fine and the response

Back in June 2025, AliExpress was ordered to bring the platform into line with the DSA, but the required changes never followed — and that, in the commission's assessment, is precisely what made the violations “especially serious.”

The new fine markedly exceeds the previous ones. In December, the social network X was the first to be hit: nearly $140 million, in part for selling “blue checkmarks” as the only means of verification. Temu was then fined more than $225 million for the high likelihood of encountering illegal goods on the platform.

AliExpress itself told Ars Technica it was “surprised” by the “disproportionate” fine and intends to appeal the decision, arguing that the commission ignored its “well-designed risk-management system” and proactive improvements. The company stresses that its EU market is substantially smaller than its Chinese one.

Virkkunen answered that argument in advance: “Size is no excuse. The spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics is not an unavoidable price of shopping online, but a consequence of AliExpress failing to meet its obligations.”

Source: Ars Technica