At Alibaba “there were many counterfeit products, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics,” the Commission said.
The European Commission has imposed a record €550 million fine on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which is accused of failing to stop the sale of illegal and dangerous products on the AliExpress platform.
“There were a lot of counterfeit products, unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics that stayed online for a long time,” he said according to Politico Hena Virkunen, Commission Vice-President for Technology.
The fine is the largest imposed under the Digital Services Regulation, which obliges major online platforms to do more to block harmful content and illegal products.
The decision comes two months after the Commission fined rival Chinese service Temu 200 million euros for similar violations.
“When determining the amount of the fine, we looked at the duration and seriousness of these infringements,” Virkunen said, recalling that Temu has so far only been found to have breached its obligation to adequately control its platform to detect illegal products offered for sale in Europe.
The investigation against it began in March 2024 and also looked into the transparency of the service’s advertising and product recommendation systems. Several of these issues were resolved by commitments accepted by the Chinese company in June 2025.
A senior EU official told Politico that AliExpress’s auditors had just 20 seconds to check the legitimacy of each product.
Alibaba now has until October 20 to propose remedial measures or face a new fine.
An Alibaba spokesman said the company would appeal, arguing the fine was disproportionately large and was imposed despite pledges to comply.
Source: In
