The European Commission imposed a fine of 550 million euros on AliExpress on July 20, the largest sanction issued under the Digital Services Act (DSA), for failing to curb the sale of counterfeit goods, unsafe toys, and dangerous cosmetics on its platform. The decision establishes a precedent that consumer regulators in Latin America, including Mexico, can draw on when designing their own oversight frameworks for cross-border e-commerce platforms.
The investigation, opened in March 2024, documented that AliExpress content reviewers had mere seconds to assess the legality of a product, according to the Commission's administrative record. Millions of items flagged as illegal reappeared on the platform and in some cases remained available for more than a month. The DSA requires platforms with more than 45 million monthly users in the European Union to identify and mitigate systemic risks, maintain internal assessments, and allocate human resources proportional to the volume of listings. This is the third significant sanction under the regulation, following fines against X (120 million euros in December 2025) and Temu (200 million euros in May 2026).
The Commission detailed that sellers evaded brand verification by recategorizing counterfeit products as generics, and that the platform's recommendation system amplified the visibility of non-compliant items. European Commissioner Henna Virkkunen stated that the spread of these products is not an inevitable cost of online commerce but a failure to meet the platform's obligations, according to the Commission's official press release. AliExpress described the fine as disproportionate and announced it is considering an appeal. The sanction represents less than 1% of the annual global revenue of Alibaba, the platform's parent company, estimated at 122 billion euros; the DSA's legal maximum is 6%.
The platform has until October 20, 2026 to submit a compliance plan. If no plan is submitted, the DSA provides for coercive fines of up to 5% of its daily global revenue. For consumer protection authorities in Latin America, the enforcement of the DSA offers a live case study in how to audit platform control systems, set corrective deadlines, and calibrate dissuasive sanctions without shutting down commercial operations.
This article was drafted with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.