On July 20, the European Commission imposed a €550 million fine on the e-commerce platform AliExpress, finding that the company had failed to adequately assess and mitigate the risk that illegal, dangerous, and counterfeit products would circulate on its platform. The focus was not on whether individual listings could be taken down, but on how far the operator had actually managed to curb the flow by which dangerous products get listed, recommended, and reappear. AliExpress has been given until October 20, 2026 to submit a remediation plan. With this decision, the Commission evaluated product safety not merely by looking at the takedown processing performed by a moderation team, but as a chain running through the entire operation.
Three Shortcomings Behind the €550 Million Fine
The European Commission identified three shortcomings in AliExpress's risk assessment. First, the company failed to properly estimate whether it had enough staff to review products suspected of being illegal, and did not realistically account for the imbalance between the number of moderators and the volume of work. Second, it did not adequately assess how its recommendation and advertising systems amplified the spread of illegal products. Third, it relied on only a single quantitative metric to measure the effectiveness of moderation, which failed to capture the risk of illegal products being relisted in similar form.
According to the Commission's investigation, there were numerous instances in which illegal products were recommended or displayed in ads to consumers before they were effectively removed. Testing also showed that large quantities of illegal products continued to circulate even after moderation. Evaluating the mechanisms for discovering listings and the mechanisms for amplifying their exposure separately does not reveal how far the circulation of dangerous products was actually curbed. What distinguishes this ruling is that it examined staffing, algorithms, and measurement metrics together as a single risk-mitigation scheme.
Listings That Remain After Removal, Classifications That Slip Through
Beyond the failure to catch illegal products, the Commission also took issue with how the company responded after such products were discovered. Products including counterfeits, dangerous toys, and unsafe cosmetics remained listed for weeks even after being identified. Penalties against sellers who sold illegal products were also not adequately enforced, and the Commission found that sanctioned stores were able to continue operating on AliExpress.
Verification of product categorization was another weak point. The Commission found that sellers could deliberately place products into categories with looser review requirements, thereby bypassing pre-listing checks. AliExpress did not assign sufficient staff to verify the accuracy of categorization, and its control measures also failed to detect misclassification before listing. In addition, the mandatory "brand authorisation" system meant to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods did not function adequately and was understaffed, making it easy for sellers to circumvent. A large number of products were later removed as counterfeits.
Beyond the speed of takedowns, the Commission also examined how misclassification, seller sanctions, and brand authorization worked together. When these fail to function properly, removed products and sellers find their way back through other channels. The Commission treated the failure to curb this chain as the reason it could not mitigate the systemic risk associated with the circulation of illegal products.
The Issues That the 2025 Commitments Did Not Resolve
The investigation began on March 14, 2024. On June 18, 2025, the European Commission accepted a set of commitments proposed by AliExpress and made them binding. These covered matters such as a reporting function available even to unregistered users, transparency of advertising and recommendation systems, seller identity verification, and data access for researchers.
However, on that same day, the Commission also issued a preliminary finding of DSA non-compliance regarding the risk assessment and mitigation related to the circulation of illegal products. Because these two issues fell outside the scope of the commitments, they remained part of this enforcement proceeding. In calculating the €550 million fine, the Commission considered the nature of the infringement, its severity for affected EU users, and the duration, which continued at least through June 2025. At the same time, the fact that the DSA is a new regulatory framework was treated as a mitigating factor in AliExpress's favor.
This sequence of events shows that even if interface transparency and reporting channels are improved, the monitoring, vetting, and exposure-control mechanisms that underpin the flow of products are examined separately. Articles 34 and 35 of the DSA require very large online platforms to assess systemic risks and to implement reasonable, proportionate, and effective mitigation measures tailored to those risks. This decision represents a concrete application of that obligation to the operational practices of product safety.
Review of the Remediation Plan Begins October 20
AliExpress must submit an action plan to the Commission by October 20, 2026, detailing the measures it will take to remedy the violations. After receiving the plan, the European Board for Digital Services will issue an opinion within one month, and the European Commission will then determine the final decision and implementation deadline within a further month. If AliExpress fails to comply with this non-compliance decision, periodic penalty payments may be imposed.
In the review that follows, simply reporting how many illegal listings were removed after being posted will not be enough to demonstrate that circulation risk has been reduced. The questions will be whether recommendations and advertising are amplifying dangerous products, whether sellers are evading categorization and authorization checks, and whether staffing and metrics can measure risk that includes relisting. The October action plan will lay out the measures AliExpress takes to remedy the violations. How its contents address each of the shortcomings identified here will be the material for the next judgment.