Elevating its voluntary commitment on product compliance for a fair, regulated online marketplace
BRUSSELS, March 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- AliExpress, a global retail online marketplace part of Alibaba Group, today signed the EU's Product Safety Pledge+, a voluntary commitment facilitated by the European Commission on product compliance and safety, during the European Consumer Summit 2023.
"Ensuring product safety and compliance is a priority for Alibaba," said Eric Pelletier, Vice President and Head of International Government Affairs at Alibaba Group. "With today's signature of the EU Product Safety Pledge+, we reaffirm our commitment to protecting consumers and cooperating with the European Commission to enhance product safety protection on our cross-border B2C marketplace AliExpress, which was a founding signatory of the original Pledge in 2018."
The Product Safety Pledge+, a voluntary commitment of online platforms with respect to the safety of non-food consumer products, is facilitated by the European Commission and based upon the Product Safety Pledge signed by AliExpress and other key industry players in 2018. With the elevated initiative, AliExpress will take on further extended responsibility to ensure the safety of non-food products sold online by third parties on the platform, with the ultimate goal of improving the detection of unsafe products marketed in the EU before they are sold to consumers, or as soon as thereafter possible, to further protect consumers.
The Product Safety Pledge+, which now covers 20 areas of voluntary commitments, is updated with 8 new areas not previously listed in the 2018 Product Safety Pledge, including requiring partaking platforms to:
- Enhance their efforts to complete the identification of relevant product listings within 3 working days, in addition to removing identified unsafe listings.
- Provide active assistance on product recalls, including directly, via email, informing consumers who had made such purchases.
- Provide information to consumers about relevant local consumer protection and market surveillance authorities for directing any product safety complaints.
- Establish a risk management plan to identify, assess, classify, and mitigate product safety risks.
- Allow access for the e-Surveillance web crawler of the Commission to identify dangerous products.
In 2018, the European Commission and four online marketplaces including AliExpress as a founding participant signed the EU's Product Safety Pledge for faster removal of dangerous products sold on online marketplaces, committing to responding within two working days to notifications on dangerous products from Member State authorities and the recalled/dangerous products information available on Safety Gate. In 2020 and 2021, a further seven platforms joined the pledge to provide safer online marketplaces for EU consumers, taking the total of signatories to 11.
Following the signing of the 2018 Product Safety Pledge, the European Commission started to discuss further improvements that could further product safety and offer even more protection for consumers. The Product Safety Pledge+ was finalized in 2023 and signed between the European Commission and 11 online platforms at the European Consumer Summit 2023.
About AliExpress
Launched in 2010, AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com) is a global marketplace serving consumers from around the world and enabling them to buy directly from manufacturers and distributors in China and around the world. In addition to the global English-language version, the AliExpress platform is also available in 17 other languages. AliExpress is a business of Alibaba Group.
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