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The European Commission is launching an investigation into Alibaba subsidiary AliExpress for selling counterfeit products and not doing enough to comply with the new Digital Services Act.
Illegal products
Specifically, the case involves offering fake medicines and food supplements and illegal ways of recruiting customers. Offering “illegal and dangerous products” is a particularly big issue, European Commissioner Thierry Breton says.
Europe is also annoyed by the lack of transparency: for example, the Commission wants “a reliable and searchable register of ads”. AliExpress also allegedly does not sufficiently protect minors from “harmful content” and does much more with customer data than is actually allowed, De Tijd and others report.
Huge fine
If the investigation results in a concrete penalty – which, to be clear, is far from certain – the EU could impose a maximum penalty of 6 % of the company’s global turnover. In the case of a global giant like AliExpres, this could amount to tens of millions of euros.
The investigation is not just about AliExpress: other major digital players are also under scrutiny over their handling of ‘deepfakes’ and access to porn sites.
