The European Commission has imposed this Monday a fine of 550 million euros on AliExpress considering that the platform has not complied with European obligations to prevent the marketing of illegal products. The sanction, the highest applied so far under the Digital Services Act (DSA) also obliges the company to correct the deficiencies detected in its control systems.
The Community Executive maintains that the mechanisms used by AliExpress have not been sufficient to quickly remove counterfeit products or items that violate European safety regulations. Furthermore, it considers that the platform overestimated the capacity of its systems to detect this type of advertisement and did not allocate sufficient resources to supervise them. The investigation also concludes that for some sellers it was "easy" to circumvent controls by modifying the category of products or taking advantage of flaws in the brand verification system.
Brussels has given a deadline until October 20 for AliExpress to present a plan with the measures it will adopt to correct the irregularities detected. Once received, it will analyze the proposal and set the timetable for its implementation.
The Vice-President of the Commission responsible for digital policy, Henna Virkkunen, has argued that the presence of counterfeit or unsafe products on e-commerce platforms cannot be considered an inevitable consequence of digital business. As she pointed out, large platforms are obliged to apply effective mechanisms to protect consumers and ensure fair competition conditions for companies that do comply with regulations.
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