AliExpress fined €550 million: “the system to detect illegal products does not work properly”

The European Commission has slapped online marketplace AliExpress a €550 million fine for breaching its obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe or counterfeit products on its popular e-commerce platform.

The Commission has ordered the platform to take action after it found AliExpress fell short of its obligations in a number of ways, including failure to properly evaluate whether it had sufficient staff to review potentially illegal products, noting its recommender and advertising systems have been seen to exacerbate the spread of illegal products.

Perhaps most damningly, the Commission identified specific shortcomings, including that AliExpress’ system to detect illegal products did not work properly, traders selling illegal products didn’t have their penalties adequately enforced and safety measures were easily circumvented through mis-categorisation of product.

The issue is pertinent to a number of consumer industries, including the cycling market which has identified illegal or potentially illegal product being imported to the UK as reputationally damaging to legal products in the market – and in some cases a danger to property and life.

Suffolk Trading Standards, which handles the port of Felixstowe – the UK’s busiest port – has previously emphasised the dangers, seizing thousands of unsafe eBikes and eScooters that would have ended up on UK streets. Trading Standards urged consumers to purchase from “reputable retailers” to stay safe. That’s a message echoed by the cycling industry which recently attempted to draw a line in the sand on the topic with the launch of the E-Bike Positive trust mark. However the issue extends beyond eBikes within the bike trade to product that adheres to legal standards.

AliExpress shortcomings

The Commission identified specific shortcomings in its statement:

• AliExpress’ system to detect illegal products did not work properly. Many illegal products, from counterfeit products to unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics, circulated on the platform and, even if detected, remained online for multiple weeks.
• AliExpress did not properly enforce its penalty policy for traders selling illegal products. The penalty policy was not adequately implemented and stores selling illegal products were able to remain active on AliExpress, despite being penalised.
• AliExpress’ product compliance checks could be easily circumvented through mis-categorisation of products. AliExpress allocated insufficient staff to verify whether products are correctly categorised, and the controls put in place failed to detect the mis-categorised products before publication. Therefore, malicious traders intentionally placed products in the wrong category to benefit from more flexible requirements, allowing non-compliant products to circulate freely on the platform.
• AliExpress failed to adequately prevent the spread of counterfeit products. Counterfeit products represent a significant risk on AliExpress. In addition to potential consequences for consumers’ rights, sellers of such products undercut legitimate businesses that invest in design, safety testing, and innovation, forcing them to compete with products that bypass these investments. AliExpress’ mandatory ‘brand authorisation’ system – intended to prevent counterfeit sales – proved ineffective and understaffed. Therefore, traders easily bypassed this system and published many products that were only later removed for being counterfeit.

The fine followed the opening of formal proceedings back in March 2024, investigating whether AliExpress has breached its DSA obligations. In June 2025, the Commission accept and made a binding a series of commitments offered by AliExpress to address the majority of its concerns. The non-compliance decision and fine issued today (Monday 20 July 2026) was based on AliExpress’ 2023 and 2024 risk assessments reports as well as additional data from the platform. The Commission’s own investigative actions also had a bearing on the decision.

The fine issued today was calculated taking into account the nature of the infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users, and their duration, which ran at least until June 2025.

However, in calculating the fine, the Commission also took into account mitigating circumstances that operate in favour of AliExpress, such as the novelty of the Digital Services Act.

As required by the DSA, AliExpress now has until 20 October 2026 to submit an action plan to the Commission. The plan must set out measures to remedy the breach of its obligations to assess and mitigate systemic risks. The European Board for Digital Services will have one month from the receipt of the plan to issue its opinion. The Commission will then have a further month to adopt its final decision and set a reasonable period for implementation.

Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments. The Commission continues to engage with AliExpress to ensure compliance with the decision and with the DSA more generally.

There’s guidance for eBike importers (into the UK) on the Suffolk Trading Standards site.