EU Puts €3 Fee on Cheap Imports

The small parcel was the genius of Temu, Shein and AliExpress. A phone cable, a T-shirt and a toy could be ordered on impulse, priced low enough that the buyer barely stopped to think, and delivered into the EU without customs duty.

From 1 July 2026, that calculation changes. A mixed order can now be charged more than once: €3 for the clothing line, €3 for the electronics line, and so on. The charge is applied by product category, not by package (Swedish Customs, Business Insider Polska). On a €10 buy, the psychology of cheapness starts to fall apart.

The measure is aimed at about 5.9 billion low-value consignments entering the EU each year, more than 90% of them from China (Der Spiegel, Reuters). It is a temporary rule, due to expire in July 2028 (EUR-Lex). But the platforms it was meant to discipline are already moving in ways that may leave them stronger, not weaker.

What the loophole actually was

The loophole was not quite as broad as it sounds. Under EU rules, goods worth less than €150 could enter without customs duty, the tax charged at the border on imported products. They were not free of VAT. That gap was closed in 2021, when the EU required platforms to collect value-added tax at checkout on all commercial imports through the Import One-Stop Shop, or IOSS (Council of the EU, EUR-Lex).

The new €3 charge therefore closes the remaining opening: the customs-duty exemption. Retailers based inside the EU never had that duty-free route available to them. German customs has described the reform in exactly those terms, as a correction to a competitive distortion (Generalzolldirektion).

Per category, not per parcel

The part likely to be noticed by shoppers is how the fee accumulates. Guidance from German, Swedish and Polish customs authorities says the charge is levied by product category, meaning by tariff heading, the customs classification code used to identify goods, rather than simply by shipment (Swedish Customs). A basket containing clothing, electronics and a toy can attract three separate charges.

The legal bill may not land directly on the consumer. Polish reporting says the formal liability can fall on the declarant, the party filing the customs form, which is often a logistics company or the platform itself (Polsat News). The practical question is simpler: whether the platforms swallow the charge or show it at checkout. There is no post-implementation pricing data yet.

The warehouse workaround

The bigger story may be the workaround already taking shape. The €3 charge applies to low-value consignments sent from outside the EU directly to a consumer. Goods imported in bulk into an EU warehouse, and then dispatched inside the single market, move through a different customs channel. The consumer parcel is no longer treated as a direct third-country import subject to the per-category levy (Rzeczpospolita, Polsat News). The bulk shipment still faces normal customs duties when it enters the EU, but the friction at the doorstep disappears.

That divides the winners and losers fairly cleanly. EU warehouse operators, fulfilment companies and European e-commerce competitors gain. Allegro's spokesman told Business Insider Polska the measure should help level competition across Europe (Business Insider Polska). Consumers who buy cheap mixed baskets lose, as do small non-EU sellers that cannot afford the stock, leases and compliance costs involved in EU warehousing.

The large Chinese platforms can afford them. That is the uncomfortable part of the reform. Temu and Shein have the logistics scale and capital to move inventory into European warehouses. A small seller in Shenzhen with ten products listed online does not. A border fee designed to narrow the platforms' advantage may instead turn scale into a new advantage.

What remains uncertain

The EU has altered the cost structure of cheap cross-border e-commerce. Whether it changes behaviour depends on evidence that does not yet exist: parcel volumes after July, checkout prices on the major platforms, and whether bulk imports into warehouses are inspected more rigorously than millions of individual parcels were. A separate handling fee is expected later this year, but the amount has not been decided (Reuters, Tagesschau).

Closing a customs loophole can make the market fairer. It can also accelerate the shift towards EU-based warehousing by the very platforms the EU was trying to restrain. Which effect comes first is now the test.