The EU began charging a €2 “Union handling fee” on November 1 on e-commerce orders shipped to consumers from outside the bloc. Unlike the €3 customs duty that’s been in place since July, the new fee applies to orders of any value, so a $300 order from a US brand pays it too.
Both charges apply per type of item rather than per package. For example, a €25 parcel holding a phone charger, a phone case, and a screen protector owes €9 in duty plus €6 in handling fees, so €15 before VAT, while a package with two identical phone cases owes just €5. The seller, platform, or shipper filing the customs declaration legally owes the fee and can pass it on to the buyer, but the fee isn’t refunded when an order is returned, even if the item is faulty.
Quick Backstory: For decades, parcels worth €150 or less entered the EU duty-free. That loophole became the backbone of Shein, Temu, and AliExpress’s European business, much like in the US, which formerly had its own de minimis exemption. The EU estimates that 5.8B low-value parcels entered the region in 2025 alone, up 26% from the year before, which led to pressure from local retailers and trade groups for change.
Here’s a brief timeline of events that led up to this new €2 fee:
- December 2025 – EU countries agreed to scrap the €150 de minimis exemption and charge a temporary €3 flat duty starting July 1.
- March 2026 – France started charging its own €2 per-item tax on small parcels, then suspended it once the EU-wide duty took effect.
- July 1, 2026 – The €3 duty took effect on parcels worth €150 or less.
- September 2026 – The EU gave final approval to its customs overhaul, which makes non-EU platforms like Temu and Shein the legal importer of what they sell, and the Commission set the handling fee at €2.
- November 1, 2026 – The €2 handling fee took effect, along with mandatory product identifiers on low-value parcels.
- July 2028 (upcoming) – The temporary €3 duty is scheduled to end when the EU’s new customs data hub goes live and normal tariffs kick in. The handling fee has no end date.
Is it working?
The €3 duty has already made a dent in the number of small parcels entering the bloc, which immediately fell 30% to 40% after July, according to French customs figures, and between June and July, sales volumes fell 50% on Temu, 37% on AliExpress, and just 15% on Shein. The Commission also estimates the fees could raise €6B a year for the EU budget from 2028 to 2034, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Shein’s sales dropped the least because it had already started moving inventory into a warehouse in Poland ahead of the €3 duty, and Temu is now rebuilding its European fulfillment network the same way it did in the US when we abolished the de minimis exemption.
As you can see, there’s the big catch: Goods that are already sitting in an EU warehouse when a customer orders them don’t owe the duty or the handling fee. Effectively, the EU is saying, “Ship in bulk and sell retail from within the region, or pay for the privilege of selling factory direct.”
Shein and Temu have the money to play by those rules and are already doing so. However, the independent brand in New York or London shipping a few orders a day to Europe likely doesn’t, and now owes €2 per item type on every order and a €3 duty per item type on all orders under €150, the former of which it doesn’t get back when a customer returns an order.
The fee was pitched as a way to tackle what Dirk Gotink, the MEP who led the customs reform, called “a highly toxic business model” of cheap, non-compliant imports from China — a label I agree with. However, in practice, the platforms it targeted like Shein and Temu saw it coming and moved their inventory to warehouses within EU borders, leaving smaller cross-border merchants to pay the duties and fees.
Time will tell whether the duty and fee accomplish their intended goals, or whether companies simply find a way to bypass them. However, in the meantime, it’s at least making a dent in the insane number of products being shipped into the bloc individually, which is objectively terrible for the environment.
