The European Commission fined AliExpress €550 million ($625 million) on July 20, 2026, in Brussels, the largest penalty yet under the Digital Services Act. The Commission’s decision found AliExpress breached its duties under Articles 34 and 35 of the DSA, the provisions requiring “very large online platforms” to assess and mitigate risks tied to illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit listings.
The system was built to fail. Some reviewers had just “tens of seconds” to judge a flagged listing, and millions of removed products reappeared online, some staying up for over a month. Sellers dodged automated checks by simply miscategorizing goods, and AliExpress’s own recommender algorithm kept surfacing the same unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics it was supposed to filter out.
Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen didn’t mince words: “Scale is not an excuse; risks must be identified and addressed systematically to ensure consumers can safely shop online.”
This is the DSA’s largest fine to date, and it lands on a platform Brussels says one in five Europeans shop at monthly, alongside Temu and Shein. If regulators found AliExpress’s risk assessments this thin, rivals running near-identical seller-verification and recommender systems shouldn’t expect a pass.
AliExpress must now fix the deficiencies the Commission identified or face periodic penalty payments layered on top of the €550 million already on the books.
James Okafor