The EU’s new €3 customs duty on low-value parcels takes effect today. France is suspending its own national €2-per-line fee to align with the new EU rule. A parcel with three product categories now owes €9 in duty before VAT under the new EU charge alone.
What's live today: The €3 fee applies per tariff-heading category, not per parcel. A shipment with a dress, sunglasses, and a phone case is charged €3 for each product category.
The measure replaces the EU's €150 duty-free threshold. It is an interim rule that will remain in place until July 2028, when the bloc's new customs system comes into effect and standard tariff rates take over.
The workaround: The duty applies only to parcels shipped directly from outside the EU to consumers. Goods imported in bulk into an EU warehouse and then shipped domestically avoid the charge because they enter as a single commercial import instead of millions of individual parcels.
That is why Temu and Shein expanded their EU warehouse networks ahead of today.
The volume at stake is enormous: About 4.6 billion parcels under €150 entered the EU in 2024, about 12 million a day, with 91% from China.
The US parallel: CBP’s postal de minimis rule takes effect July 24, closing the equivalent US loophole through carrier data and bonding requirements rather than a per-item duty. The mechanism differs, but the EU and US rules land within three weeks of each other and reach the same outcome: a direct-from-overseas parcel now carries a cost that bulk, in-region inventory avoids.
