EU fines AliExpress €550 mln for breaching Digital Services Act

Published Jul 20, 10:00 AM UTC

The European Commission fined Chinese ecommerce giant AliExpress €550 million on Monday for breaching the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to adequately assess and mitigate risks of illegal, unsafe, and counterfeit products on its platform. This is the largest penalty imposed under the DSA to date. The Commission found that AliExpress lacked sufficient safeguards, including inadequate staffing to review potentially illegal products and weak penalty policies against repeat-offending traders. AliExpress, which has approximately 193 million monthly users in the EU, disagreed with the findings and called the fine disproportionate, announcing it would appeal. The company has until October 20 to submit a compliance action plan. The fine represents less than 1% of parent company Alibaba's €122 billion annual revenue, well below the maximum possible 6% of global turnover.