EU Commission opens formal proceedings against AliExpress

The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to investigate whether AliExpress may have infringed the Digital Services Act in areas such as risk management and mitigation, content moderation and internal complaint management system, transparency of advertising and recommendation systems, traceability of traders and access to data for researchers.

Focusing on alleged violations of the Digital Services Act

Following the initiation of the procedure, the Commission's actions focus on alleged violations of the Digital Services Act, such as the lack of effective measures to prevent the distribution of illegal content, compliance with the legal obligation to collect and evaluate information on merchants of the "AliExpress Affiliate Programme" and the lack of enforcement of terms of service prohibiting certain products that are dangerous to the health of consumers. The Commission cites counterfeit medicines and food as well as food supplements as examples.

Background

AliExpress was designated as a very large online platform (VLOP) under the EU Digital Services Act on 25 April 2023 after the company reported that it had 104.3 million active monthly users in the EU. As a very large online platform, AliExpress had to start fulfilling a number of legal obligations just four months after its designation.

Contents of the procedure:

https://europa.eu/newsroom/ecpc-failover/pdf/ip-24-1485_de.pdf