European Commission imposes record €550 million fine on AliExpress - Le Monde

A warehouse dedicated to international e-commerce for Cainiao and AliExpress in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China, on November 10, 2023. ZHANG XUAN/XINHUA VIA AFP The Chinese e-commerce website AliExpress was fined €550 million on Monday, July 20, for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). This European Union regulation stipulates that acts that are illegal offline are also illegal online. After the social media platform X, which was fined €120 million , and the e-commerce platform Temu ( €200 million ), the sanction marks the third time the European Commission has enforced the DSA since it came into force. While the fine imposed on AliExpress is, to date, the largest, the Commission also said that Temu's penalty could be increased as it is still under investigation. In 2023 and 2024, the EU Commission investigated AliExpress, a subsidiary of Alibaba that specializes in low-cost goods of all kinds, and found that it had failed to fulfill its obligations regarding stopping the sale of illegal products. According to the Commission, AliExpress did not respect its obligations under the DSA: It failed to "diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe or counterfeit products." "The spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and other illegal and harmful products is not an unavoidable cost of shopping online – it is a failure by AliExpress to comply with its obligations under the Digital Services Act. Scale is not an excuse," said Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen. You have 62.92% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.