China-based AliExpress breached EU digital rules over illegal products
The Commission accepted many commitments by the e-commerce marketplace to comply with the Digital Services Act but said it has not done enough on illegal products.
News Moderator - Tomas Kauer BRUSSELS — The European Commission said e-commerce marketplace AliExpress has breached its platform rules over its handling of illegal products in preliminary findings Wednesday.
The findings may eventually lead to fines for the China-based company, which has been under scrutiny from EU regulators around its compliance with the bloc’s new digital rules.
In the announcement, the Commission also said the company had gone a significant way to meeting its obligations under other parts of the Digital Services Act.
That law requires Very Large Online Platforms — of which AliExpress is one — to assess what risks it carries for the spread of illegal content or goods and how it would mitigate them.
AliExpress failed to properly consider these risks and its content moderation systems show systemic failures, the Commission said Wednesday. It also said AliExpress doesn’t enforce its policy against traders that sell illegal goods.
The Commission accepted the company’s commitment in other areas of compliance with the DSA. Those include how it monitors the potential health impacts of goods sold on the platform, its notification system for illegal goods, and its internal complaint handling system.
The Commission also gave AliExpress sign off for changes the company has made over the transparency of its advertising and recommender systems (which promote content for users), to improve the traceability of traders, and for access to public data for researchers.
These cover the “majority” of the Commission’s concerns in the investigation, which was launched in March 2024, a Commission official said.
AliExpress will implement a new internal monitoring framework and will submit reports to an “independent Monitoring Trustee,” the Commission said.
After Wednesday’s decision, the EU executive is also making AliExpress’s commitments binding, meaning future breaches can lead to fines.
In particular, AliExpress committed to making changes on hidden links, where illegal goods — often fake brands — are hidden between “the image of a completely legal product,” on how it verifies influencers, and on the verification of food supplements and medical products.
AliExpress did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
