AliExpress fined €550 million after unsafe and illegal products stayed online for weeks

A record EU sanction has turned last year’s preliminary case into a final enforcement decision. Regulators said counterfeit goods, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics remained online for weeks, while AliExpress disputes the penalty and faces an October deadline to explain how it will fix its failures.

How unsafe listings stayed visible for weeks and were promoted to shoppers

A shopper searching AliExpress for a toy, cosmetic or piece of branded clothing could have been shown an illegal or unsafe listing even after the platform’s systems had identified a problem, according to the European Commission’s findings. The regulator said some products remained online for several weeks. It also found that AliExpress’s advertising and recommendation systems aggravated their spread, potentially placing them before more shoppers while controls were failing to remove them quickly enough.

Brussels said the problem went beyond individual traders slipping prohibited items past a check. AliExpress had not realistically assessed whether it employed enough human reviewers for the workload, while its brand-authorisation system intended to stop counterfeit sales was understaffed and could be circumvented. The Commission also found that sellers penalised for offering illegal goods could continue trading on the platform.

The scale helps explain the size of the penalty. European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen said AliExpress had 193 million users in Europe last year. She described the failings as dangerous for consumers and unfair to businesses following EU rules.

The €550 million fine turns last year’s case into action

In June 2025, the Commission had issued only preliminary findings and AliExpress still had the opportunity to respond. The €550 million fine imposed on July 20, 2026 is a final non-compliance decision, although the company plans to appeal.

The investigation began in March 2024 and the penalty concerns conduct up to at least June 2025. It is now the largest fine imposed under the Digital Services Act (DSA), exceeding the €200 million penalty given to Temu in May and the €120 million fine imposed on X in 2025.

The DSA is the EU rulebook requiring the biggest online platforms to identify and reduce systemic risks, including the spread of illegal goods. The AliExpress decision centres on failures to assess that risk properly and take effective steps to reduce it.

The ruling does not mean every AliExpress product is unsafe

The decision is not a platform-wide product recall, does not identify every affected listing and does not announce automatic refunds for previous purchases. AliExpress has not been banned in Europe, and shoppers can continue using it. Nor does the finding establish that all goods sold through AliExpress are unsafe. It identifies weaknesses in the platform’s systems that the Commission said allowed counterfeit, dangerous or otherwise illegal products to circulate.

The ruling directly covers AliExpress’s operations in the European Union, including purchases made from Spain. It is not a UK enforcement decision because the DSA does not apply there.

Anyone concerned about a particular non-food item can search the EU’s Safety Gate database for official alerts and recalls. A safety problem or accident can also be reported in any EU language through the Consumer Safety Gateway, which sends the information to the relevant national authority.

An October deadline could change checks and recommendations

AliExpress said it had invested substantial resources in risk assessment, product safety and consumer protection. It called the fine “disproportionate”, argued that its improvements had not been properly recognised and said it would appeal.

The Commission has given the company until October 20, 2026 to submit an action plan explaining how it will remedy the failures. The European Board for Digital Services will then review the plan before the Commission sets an implementation period.

Failure to comply can trigger further periodic penalty payments. Shoppers could eventually see stricter seller sanctions, stronger product checks and changes to advertising or recommendations making unsafe listings harder to encounter and quicker to remove.