On Wednesday 18 June, the European Commission announced that it had accepted and made binding a series of commitments proposed by the Chinese digital retail platform AliExpress as part of proceedings for infringement of the ‘Digital Services Act’ (DSA), which were opened in March 2024 (see EUROPE 13371/24).
These commitments cover the following issues: - the platform’s verification, monitoring and detection systems designed to mitigate certain risks associated with hidden links, its affiliate programme and products potentially affecting health and minors; - the platform’s notice and action mechanism; - the internal complaint handling system; - the transparency of AliExpress’ advertising and recommender system; - traceability of traders; - access to public data on the platform for researchers.
Any breach of the commitments would “immediately” result in a breach of the DSA and could therefore lead to fines, warns the EU institution in a press release. The European Commission will continue to monitor the commitments made by means of a specific monitoring framework, including regular reports from an independent entity—a ‘monitoring trustee’—whose first report is expected in November.
See the detailed commitments made by AliExpress here: https://aeur.eu/f/hew
On Wednesday, the European Commission also announced preliminary findings confirming breaches of other aspects of the DSA by AliExpress. In particular, it believes that the Chinese platform’s content moderation systems show systemic risks of failure, with the result that it is vulnerable to manipulation by malicious traders. AliExpress also fails to appropriately enforce its penalty policy concerning traders that repeatedly post illegal content.
These findings are in breach of the obligations of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), which must properly assess and mitigate the systemic risks relating to the dissemination of illegal content, such as counterfeit goods or goods that do not comply with European safety rules.
The Chinese platform is now in a position to exercise its right of defence, in particular by having access to the documents in the file.
“AliExpress has its back against the wall, because we are telling them that they have breached the DSA”, explained a source inside the EU institution. However, no deadline has been set for remedying the breaches that have been observed. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)