EU asks Chinese e-commerce site for information on fake medicines

The European Commission sent a formal request for information to the Chinese e-commerce site AliExpress on the measures it is taking to protect consumers from illegal products, such as the sale of fake medicines online.

AliExpress, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, must respond by November 27 or face investigation.

The European Commission could impose a fine for “incorrect, incomplete or misleading information” related to the application.

AliExpress is considered a “very large online platform” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force for such platforms in August.

This means the company is subject to new requirements aimed at protecting users online.

“The Digital Services Act is not just about hate speech, disinformation and cyberbullying,” Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, said in a statement.

“It is also there to ensure the removal of illegal or dangerous products sold in the EU via e-commerce platforms, including the growing number of counterfeit and potentially deadly medicines and pharmaceuticals sold online,” he said. he adds.

The European Commission has also sent formal requests to TikTok, Meta and X (formerly Twitter) regarding the dissemination of disinformation and illegal or violent content.

Non-compliance with the new European rules results in heavy penalties, proportional to the size of the company.

Platforms classified as “very large”, meaning having at least 45 million monthly active users (10 percent of the EU population), could be fined up to to 6 percent of their global turnover.

The European Commission could also place the platform under enhanced surveillance or, as a “very last resort”, ask judges to ban the bloc’s platform.

So far, the EU has designated 19 companies as very large online platforms or search engines.

Fake medicines on online markets

A 2022 report from the European Intellectual Property Office and Europol states that counterfeit pharmaceutical products have moved from physical to online markets, with an “increasingly wide range of medicines”.

Counterfeit and pirated products imported into the bloc have an estimated value of 119 billion, the report added.

Patients in Austria and the United Kingdom have been recently hospitalized with serious side effects after taking falsified weight loss drugs, with regulators warning doctors to check the source of supply if it is not from legal pharmacies.

Under the Digital Services Act, online marketsmust identify merchants selling products to better protect consumers from illegal products.

They are also required to inform consumers who have purchased a product as soon as the company becomes aware that it is illegal and to carry out random checks of product documentation.