AliExpress slapped with record $629M EU fine over illegal products

Alibaba’s AliExpress was hit with a record fine of 550 million euros ($629 million) by ⁠the European Union on Monday for failing to ⁠tackle sales of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products on its platform.

The fine was the third issued by the European Commission under the EU’s landmark Digital Services Act, which requires very large online platforms to do more to counter illegal and harmful content.

The Commission ⁠charged AliExpress in June last year with failing to comply with a DSA requirement to assess and mitigate the risks of the dissemination of illegal products.

It set an Oct. 20 deadline for AliExpress to propose remedial measures, and the company could face further penalties if the regulator decides in December that they do not comply with the DSA.

“This is very dangerous for consumers, unfair for companies which are complying with all our rules,” EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen told reporters.

She pointed to AliExpress’s 193 million users in Europe last year, versus Shein’s 156 million and Temu’s 130 million. Temu has also been fined under the DSA and Shein is facing an ongoing investigation.

“One in five Europeans say they shop once ⁠a ⁠month from Shein, Temu and AliExpress,” Virkkunen said.

AliExpress criticized the EU fine, saying it was excessive.

“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 in an email.

“We are carefully reviewing the decision and considering all available options.”

AliExpress penalty higher than fines for Musk’s X and Temu

The Commission said that AliExpress had not properly evaluated whether it had enough people to review the risks and had overestimated the effectiveness of its system in detecting and removing illegal products.

The regulator criticized ⁠the company’s recommender and advertising systems for exacerbating the spread of illegal products and its reliance on one quantitative indicator to measure its moderation system to prevent the risk of illegal products appearing or reappearing in similar forms.

It said the failure of AliExpress to detect illegal products meant that illegal products, ranging from counterfeit products to unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics, remained online for many weeks.

The Commission also took issue with the company’s ineffective penalty policy, which resulted in penalised businesses continuing to sell illegal products on its platform.

It said ⁠that the ‌mandatory AliExpress “brand ‌authorization” system – intended to prevent counterfeit sales – was ineffective and understaffed and was ⁠easily circumvented by traders selling fake products.

The regulator said the novelty ‌of the DSA was a mitigating factor in calculating the fine, which could have been higher. The penalty is significantly higher than the 120 million euros handed out to Elon ⁠Musk’s social media platform X in December last year and the 200 million euros ⁠Temu was fined last May, both for DSA violations.

AliExpress dodged a fine, which could be as ⁠much as 6% of its global annual turnover, in June last year after agreeing to measures to tackle the dissemination of potentially illegal and pornographic materials on its platform.

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