The European Commission on Monday fined Chinese online marketplace AliExpress 550 million euros ($629 million) for failing to adequately crack down on the sale of unsafe and counterfeit products on its site.
The fine, the biggest ever imposed for breaches of the 27-nation European Union’s Digital Services Act, comes just months after another online retailer, Temu, was fined 200 million euros for similar breaches. Last year, Brussels issued a $120 million penalty for Elon Musk’s social media site X.
“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,” Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a statement.
“Scale is not an excuse; risks must be identified and addressed systematically to ensure consumers can safely shop online. Today, we are holding AliExpress to this standard and request it to take action,” she added.
In a comment emailed to The Associated Press, AliExpress said that since the DSA came into force the company “has been, and continues to be, firmly committed to meeting our obligations and we have invested substantial resources in risk assessment and mitigation, product safety and consumer protection.”
