On 20 July 2026, the European Commission fined AliExpress €550 million for breaching its obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to diligently assess and mitigate the risks associated with the sale of illegal, unsafe or counterfeit products on its e-commerce platform. Alongside the fine, the Commission ordered the platform to take corrective action.
The decision follows the €200 million fine issued to Temu in May 2026 for comparable failings.
For manufacturers, importers and brand owners placing products on the EU market, the significance of this decision lies less in the headline figure than in what it obliges platforms to do next.
What the Commission found
The Commission’s decision addresses two distinct sets of obligations: the duty to assess systemic risk, and the duty to mitigate it. AliExpress was found to have fallen short on both.
Failure to diligently assess risk
The Commission identified three principal shortcomings in how AliExpress evaluated the risk of illegal products circulating through its service:
- Moderation capacity was not realistically assessed. AliExpress did not properly evaluate whether it had sufficient staff to review potentially illegal products. Having overestimated how effectively its systems detected and removed such products, the platform failed to account realistically for the mismatch between the number of human moderators and the workload they faced.
- Recommender and advertising systems were not adequately assessed. The platform did not sufficiently examine how its recommendation and advertising systems amplified the spread of illegal products. Testing carried out by Commission services found that numerous illegal products were recommended or advertised to consumers before those listings were eventually removed.
- The measurement framework was inadequate. AliExpress relied on a single quantitative indicator, which did not properly measure whether its moderation system prevented illegal products from appearing or reappearing in similar form. Commission testing confirmed that substantial volumes of illegal products continued to circulate despite the platform’s moderation efforts.
Failure to mitigate identified risks
The Commission also concluded that AliExpress had not taken effective measures to reduce the risk of dissemination, pointing in particular to:
- A detection system that did not function properly. A wide range of illegal products, from counterfeits to dangerous toys and hazardous cosmetics, circulated on the platform and, even once detected, frequently remained online for several weeks.
- A penalty policy that was not enforced. Sanctions against traders selling illegal products were not applied properly, and penalised shops were able to remain active on the platform.
- Compliance checks that were easily circumvented. Product compliance verification could be bypassed through miscategorisation. AliExpress had allocated insufficient staff to verify whether products were correctly categorised, and the controls in place failed to detect miscategorised products before publication. Malicious traders deliberately placed products in the wrong category in order to attract laxer requirements, allowing non-compliant goods to circulate freely.
- An ineffective anti-counterfeiting mechanism. The platform’s mandatory “brand authorisation” system, intended to prevent counterfeit sales, proved ineffective and understaffed. Traders bypassed it with ease, publishing numerous products that were only removed later as counterfeits. Beyond the consequences for consumers, the Commission noted that sellers of such goods undercut legitimate businesses that invest in design, safety testing and innovation.
Commenting on the decision, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen said that “Scale is not an excuse; risks must be identified and addressed systematically” so that consumers can shop safely online.
How the fine was calculated
The Commission set the fine by reference to the nature of the infringements, their gravity in terms of the EU users affected, and their duration. It ran at least until June 2025, when the preliminary findings were issued. Failing to conduct proper risk assessments and to effectively mitigate systemic risks is treated as a particularly serious infringement of the DSA. The Commission did, however, take into account mitigating circumstances operating in AliExpress’ favour, including the novelty of the Digital Services Act.
For context, the DSA allows fines of up to 6% of a platform’s global annual turnover.
What happens next
AliExpress has until 20 October 2026 to submit an action plan to the Commission setting out the measures it will take to remedy the breach of its risk assessment and mitigation obligations. The European Board for Digital Services then has one month from receipt of the plan to deliver its opinion, after which the Commission has a further month to adopt its final decision and set a reasonable implementation period.
Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may trigger periodic penalty payments. The Commission has stated that it continues to engage with AliExpress to ensure compliance with both the decision and the DSA more broadly.
How the case developed
- 14 March 2024 — The Commission opened formal proceedings to assess whether AliExpress had breached the DSA in areas including risk assessment and mitigation, content moderation and internal complaint handling, transparency of advertising and recommender systems, trader traceability, and data access for researchers.
- 18 June 2025 — The Commission accepted and made legally binding a series of commitments offered by AliExpress, resolving most of the concerns that had triggered the investigation, including the notice-and-action mechanism and transparency of advertising and recommender systems. On the same day, it issued preliminary findings that the systemic risks of illegal product dissemination had been neither assessed nor mitigated, the two grievances not covered by the commitments.
- 20 July 2026 — The non-compliance decision and €550 million fine. The decision draws on AliExpress’ 2023 and 2024 risk assessment reports, additional data provided by the platform (notably in response to the Commission’s formal requests for information of 6 November 2023 and 18 January 2024), information shared by third parties, and the Commission’s own investigative measures.
The Temu precedent
The AliExpress decision follows closely on the €200 million fine issued to Temu on 28 May 2026. There, the Commission found that Temu had failed to diligently identify, analyse and assess the systemic risks of illegal products being offered on its platform, and the resulting harm to EU consumers.
The specific criticisms will sound familiar. Temu’s risk assessment was based on general information about the e-commerce sector as a whole rather than on evidence specific to its own service, and it seriously underestimated how often EU consumers were likely to encounter illegal items. A mystery shopping exercise conducted as part of the Commission’s investigation found that a very high percentage of selected chargers failed basic safety tests, while a high percentage of the baby toys tested posed safety risks of medium to high severity, containing chemicals above legal safety limits, or presenting suffocation hazards due to detachable parts. The Commission also found that Temu had not properly assessed how the design of its service, including recommender systems and product promotion by affiliated influencers, could amplify the dissemination of illegal products.
Temu’s action plan is due by 28 August 2026.
Why this matters for manufacturers, not just platforms
The DSA is not part of the EU product safety framework, and these decisions do not impose obligations on manufacturers directly. But the practical consequences run straight through to anyone selling on a large online marketplace.
The Commission has now established, twice in two months, that a platform cannot satisfy its risk-mitigation duties through downstream takedowns alone. What the decisions penalise are upstream failures: insufficient verification staff, weak category controls, unenforced seller sanctions, and brand authorisation systems that do not work. Every one of those remedies has to be implemented at the point where sellers and products enter the marketplace.
The realistic outcome is that marketplaces operating in the EU will tighten their seller onboarding and listing requirements, demanding stronger documentary evidence of product compliance, stricter category verification, verifiable EU economic operator details, and faster enforcement against sellers who cannot produce them. Platforms already carry their own product safety duties under the General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988, including registering on the Safety Gate Portal, designating a single point of contact, and maintaining internal product safety processes. Under enforcement pressure, those duties are the mechanism through which compliance expectations are passed down the chain.
For manufacturers, this cuts in two directions. Companies that cannot evidence compliance face the prospect of delisting, blocked listings or suspended seller accounts, commercial consequences that arrive faster than any regulatory proceeding. Companies that can evidence compliance gain the more levelled playing field the Commission explicitly said it was seeking to restore.
The affected product categories range widely: toys, cosmetics, electrical and electronic equipment under the EMC and Low Voltage Directives, food supplements, medical devices, and the broad range of consumer products covered by the GPSR.
Practical steps to take now
If your products reach EU consumers through an online marketplace, this is the moment to close any gaps before a platform closes them for you:
- Confirm your EU economic operator arrangements. No consumer product may be placed on the EU market without an economic operator established in the Union who is responsible for it. All products must have EU Responsible Person, whose details must appear on the product, packaging, parcel or accompanying documentation and, in practice, on the listing itself.
- Verify that technical documentation is complete and current. Risk analysis, applicable standards, test reports and the EU Declaration of Conformity must be in place before placing the product on the market, and readily available to market surveillance authorities and to marketplace compliance teams.
- Check product categorisation. Miscategorisation was a central finding in the AliExpress decision. Expect marketplaces to verify categories far more rigorously, and expect incorrect classification to be treated as a red flag rather than an administrative slip.
- Review labelling and traceability. CE marking where applicable, model and batch identification, warnings and safety information in the required languages, and correct economic operator contact details are just some of the examples of required elements.
- Confirm sector-specific obligations. Cosmetic products require CPNP notification and a Responsible Person; medical devices require EUDAMED registration and an Authorised Representative; food supplements are subject to national notification requirements that vary between Member States.
- Keep post-market processes running. Complaint handling, incident reporting through the Safety Business Gateway, and corrective action procedures are increasingly what authorities and platforms ask to see.
How Obelis can help
Obelis Group has acted as an EU Authorised Representative and regulatory consultancy since 1988, supporting manufacturers across the sectors most exposed to this shift in enforcement: general consumer products under the GPSR, toys, electrical and electronic equipment (EMC/LVD), cosmetics, food supplements and medical devices.
Our teams can act as your EU Authorised Representative or Responsible Person, review your technical documentation, verify labelling and classification, handle notifications and registrations, and manage communication with market surveillance authorities.
Enforcement against marketplaces is only going to intensify. The manufacturers who come through it well will be the ones who addressed their compliance gaps before the platform asked.
Sources
- European Commission, Commission fines AliExpress €550 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, IP/26/1654, Brussels, 20 July 2026 — https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1654
- European Commission, Shaping Europe’s Digital Future, Commission fines AliExpress €550 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, 20 July 2026 — https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-fines-aliexpress-eu550-million-breaching-digital-services-act
- European Commission, official Instagram announcement of the fine, 20 July 2026 — https://www.instagram.com/p/DbAt3XAjNpS/
Case background
- European Commission, Commission accepts commitments offered by AliExpress under the Digital Services Act and takes further action on illegal products, IP/25/1551, Brussels, 18 June 2025 — https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1551
The Temu decision
- European Commission, Commission fines Temu €200 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, IP/26/1178, Brussels, 28 May 2026 — https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1178
- European Commission, Shaping Europe’s Digital Future, Commission fines Temu €200 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, 28 May 2026 — https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-fines-temu-eu200-million-breaching-digital-services-act
Regulatory framework
- European Commission, Shaping Europe’s Digital Future, Digital Services Act — main aspects of the regulation — https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act
- European Commission, Digital Services Act: keeping us safe online, 22 September 2025 (6% of global annual turnover ceiling) — https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/digital-services-act-keeping-us-safe-online-2025-09-22_en
- Regulation (EU) 2023/988 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 on general product safety (GPSR), EUR-Lex — https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/988/oj/eng
- EU-OSHA, Regulation 2023/988/EU — general product safety (marketplace obligations: Safety Gate registration, single point of contact, internal product safety processes) — https://osha.europa.eu/en/legislation/directive/regulation-2023988eu-general-product-safety