The AliExpress EU fine has reached €550 million after regulators found that the online marketplace failed to adequately control illegal, unsafe and counterfeit goods sold to European consumers.
The European Commission announced the penalty on July 20, 2026, saying AliExpress breached its obligations under the European Union’s Digital Services Act, or DSA. The law requires major digital platforms to identify systemic risks and take effective steps to reduce them.
The decision places renewed pressure on international e-commerce companies that connect European shoppers with large networks of third-party sellers. It also signals that regulators expect online marketplaces to take greater responsibility for the legality and safety of products offered through their platforms.
AliExpress EU fine follows product-control failures
The Commission said AliExpress did not properly assess or limit the risks associated with illegal products on its marketplace.
According to regulators, the company’s detection systems failed to identify many prohibited or noncompliant items. Even after some products were detected, they could remain available for several weeks before removal.
The products cited by regulators included counterfeit merchandise, unsafe toys and potentially dangerous cosmetics. The Commission said their continued availability showed that AliExpress’s controls were not operating at the level required under the DSA.
The ruling focused not only on individual product listings but also on what the Commission described as broader weaknesses in the company’s risk-management systems.
Large platforms cannot rely solely on customer complaints or isolated takedowns. Under the DSA, they must evaluate how their technology, seller policies and internal procedures may allow illegal goods to spread at scale.
Seller penalties and compliance checks fell short
European regulators also criticized AliExpress’s enforcement policies for merchants that repeatedly offered illegal products.
The Commission found that sellers could continue operating even after facing penalties. That weakened the deterrent effect of the marketplace’s enforcement system and allowed noncompliant traders to keep reaching customers.
AliExpress’s product-compliance checks could also be bypassed when merchants mislabeled or placed goods in incorrect categories, according to the findings. That created a relatively simple route around controls intended to flag higher-risk listings.
The company’s mandatory brand-authorization process was another area of concern. The system was designed to confirm that sellers had permission to offer branded products, but the Commission concluded that it was ineffective and lacked sufficient staffing.
As a result, traders could evade checks that were supposed to reduce the circulation of counterfeit merchandise.
Those findings are commercially significant because third-party marketplaces depend on scale. The same model that allows millions of sellers and products to reach consumers can also create substantial compliance risks when screening and enforcement systems fail to keep pace.
Digital Services Act enforcement intensifies
The AliExpress EU fine is part of a broader European effort to impose stronger accountability on large online platforms.
The Commission opened formal proceedings involving AliExpress in March 2024. In June 2025, it made several commitments from the company legally binding, including measures related to trader traceability, advertising transparency, recommender systems and researcher access to platform data.
However, the latest decision found that AliExpress still failed to meet separate obligations to assess and reduce systemic risks linked to illegal and unsafe products.
The DSA applies stricter requirements to platforms with a major presence in the European market. Its central principle is that conduct considered illegal offline should not gain protection simply because it occurs through a digital service.
For e-commerce companies, that means compliance increasingly extends beyond responding to government notices. Platforms must show that their systems are designed to prevent predictable risks, identify repeat offenders and remove unlawful products quickly.
The €550 million penalty is the largest fine issued under the DSA to date, according to multiple reports. The decision therefore establishes an important benchmark for other global marketplaces operating in Europe.
Business implications for online marketplaces
The enforcement action could raise compliance costs across the online retail industry.
Marketplaces may need to invest more heavily in seller verification, automated product screening, human review teams and faster removal procedures. They may also face pressure to conduct more detailed checks on branded products and high-risk categories such as toys and cosmetics.
Stricter controls could slow the process of adding new sellers or listings. However, regulators appear to view that cost as necessary to protect consumers and legitimate businesses from unsafe goods and counterfeiting.
The case also presents a risk for Alibaba, which owns AliExpress. Although the Commission’s decision targets the marketplace, the fine and required operational changes could affect the group’s European strategy, compliance spending and relationships with merchants.
AliExpress has disputed the penalty and described it as disproportionate, according to published reports. The company has also defended the improvements it says it has made to platform safety and indicated that it plans to appeal.
AliExpress faces an October deadline
The Commission has ordered AliExpress to submit a corrective action plan by Oct. 20, 2026.
The plan must explain how the platform will address its failure to assess and mitigate systemic risks linked to illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products.
After receiving the proposal, the European Board for Digital Services will have one month to issue an opinion. The Commission will then have another month to adopt its final decision on the plan and establish what it considers a reasonable implementation period.
That process means the financial penalty is only one part of the case. AliExpress must also demonstrate that it can make measurable operational changes to its seller controls, product-detection systems and enforcement procedures.
The next issues to watch will be whether AliExpress appeals the fine, how regulators assess its October action plan and whether the case leads to tougher product-screening standards across other major e-commerce platforms serving the European Union.
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