The Commission found that AliExpress fell short of its risk-assessment obligations in several respects. It had not properly evaluated whether it employed sufficient staff to review potentially illegal listings, having overestimated the effectiveness of its detection systems and failed to account for the resulting mismatch between moderator numbers and workload. It had also inadequately assessed the extent to which its recommender and advertising systems exacerbated the spread of illegal products; Commission testing showed that a number of such products were recommended or advertised to consumers before being removed. Furthermore, AliExpress's assessment relied on a single quantitative indicator that did not properly capture whether its moderation system prevented illegal products from appearing, or reappearing in similar form - a gap that the Commission's own testing confirmed, finding that large volumes of illegal products continued to circulate despite the platform's moderation efforts.

AliExpress was also found not to have taken effective measures to reduce these risks. In practice, its detection system did not function properly: illegal products, ranging from counterfeits to unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics, circulated on the platform and, even once identified, often remained online for several weeks. Its penalty policy for traders selling illegal products was poorly enforced, allowing penalised stores to stay active. Compliance checks could also be circumvented through mis-categorisation, as insufficient staffing and inadequate controls let traders deliberately misclassify products to exploit more lenient category requirements. Finally, the platform's mandatory brand-authorisation system, intended to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods, proved ineffective and understaffed: traders were able to bypass it and get counterfeit items published, which were only taken down afterwards - harming not just consumers, but also honest sellers who invest in proper design, testing and development and end up competing against rivals who skip those costs.

The fine reflects the nature of the infringements, their gravity in terms of the number of EU users affected, and their duration, which ran at least until June 2025, when the Commission issued its preliminary findings. Failing to properly assess and mitigate systemic risks is considered a particularly serious DSA infringement, though the relative novelty of the DSA framework was taken into account as a mitigating factor.

AliExpress must submit an action plan to the Commission by 20 October 2026, setting out measures to remedy the breach of its obligations to assess and mitigate systemic risks. The European Board for Digital Services will then have one month to issue its opinion, after which the Commission will have a further month to adopt its final decision and set a reasonable period for implementation. Failure to comply may result in periodic penalty payments, and the Commission will continue to engage with AliExpress to ensure compliance with the decision and with the DSA more broadly.

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