AliExpress Fined $629 Million by EU Over Product-Safety Concerns — Update

By Edith Hancock

Alibaba's AliExpress received a 550 million-euro ($629.2 million) fine from the European Union's executive arm, the largest penalty officials have handed a company so far under the bloc's Digital Services Act.

The European Commission said Monday that the Chinese e-commerce platform hadn't done enough to assess the risks of users being exposed to illegal products on its website, or adequately prevent users from being exposed to them.

"We disagree with today's decision and the disproportionate fine, which does not adequately reflect our established framework and the significant, proactive enhancements we have made," AliExpress said. "We are carefully reviewing the decision and considering all available options."

The commission started investigating AliExpress in March 2024 under the DSA, a law that obliges large online platforms to take extra steps to ensure users aren't being exposed to harmful content. In the case of e-commerce, that can mean counterfeit products, illicit material or goods that don't meet the EU's safety standards.

"The spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and other illegal and harmful products is not an unavoidable cost of shopping online--it is a failure by AliExpress to comply with its obligations under the Digital Services Act," Henna Virkkunen, the bloc's tech commissioner, said.

According to the commission, the company didn't properly assess if it had enough staff to look into potentially illegal products sold on its website, hadn't assessed how its own recommender and advertising systems were promoting them, and its system to detect those products didn't work properly.

Many products like counterfeit goods and unsafe toys circulated on the platform and stayed online for weeks, the regulator said. It also said that stores selling them were able to remain active on AliExpress, despite having been penalized by the company.

The company is one of a handful of China-linked retailers to come under fire from European regulators over the products that circulate on their platforms. Officials fined Temu, owned by China's PDD Holdings, 200 million euros earlier this year, saying the company hadn't done enough to assess the risk of unsafe products on its website. Temu said it disagreed with the regulator's decision and considered the fine disproportionate.

The commission also started investigating Shein in February after regulators in France said they had found sex dolls resembling children listed for sale in 2025. Shein said at the time that it has invested significantly to bring the platform in line with EU rules.

AliExpress did make the regulator an offer in June last year to address concerns about how it monitored illegal products, at the same time that officials said they believed the company may have underestimated the risks its platform poses.

The company now has until Oct. 20 to submit a plan to the commission outlining measures it is taking to address officials' concerns.

Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 20, 2026 07:57 ET (11:57 GMT)