€3 duty hits cheap parcels

A €30 basket on Temu now looks different from Malta: a phone cover, earbuds, a T-shirt and sandals. Until last week, that order still owed VAT, but it entered the EU without customs duty. Since 1 July, each of those four product categories carries a separate €3 customs charge, adding €12 before VAT and delivery are counted (Le Figaro, Senior Actu). The cheaper the order, the more visible the hit.

The EU has removed the customs-duty exemption for parcels worth up to €150 sent from outside the bloc. In its place comes a flat €3 duty per product type in the shipment, which the European Commission says is temporary until a wider customs reform is expected around 2028 (European Commission, Dutch Customs). The Commission avoids naming companies, but the target is obvious: high-volume non-EU platforms such as Shein, Temu and AliExpress, which built large European businesses by sending low-cost goods directly from Chinese warehouses (fr.euronews, rp.pl).

The cost stack behind the checkout button

The new duty is only one layer. It comes on top of charges shoppers were already paying, sometimes without realising until the parcel reached the door.

First comes VAT, the sales tax applied to goods in every EU country. Since 2021, import VAT has applied to all parcels from outside the bloc, however small. Platforms can collect it at checkout through IOSS, the Import One Stop Shop, or the courier collects it when the parcel arrives (EU IOSS).

Then comes the carrier’s own handling fee for customs paperwork. In the Netherlands, PostNL charges €10 for standard customs handling, rising to €16 for goods needing extra declarations (PostNL). In Germany, Deutsche Post/DHL charges €7.50 per customs-liable shipment (Haufe).

For Maltese consumers, used to ordering everything from phone accessories to clothes online because local choice is limited and prices are often higher, the real bill is now a stack: product price, shipping, VAT, the new €3-per-category duty, and a handling fee if the platform has not settled the charges upfront. Five T-shirts count as one product type, so one €3 charge. T-shirts plus a watch: two charges. T-shirts, a watch, shoes and a toy: four (European Commission, Law Society of Ireland). Mixed baskets of cheap items are where the measure bites hardest.

PostNL’s advice to Dutch shoppers captures the same problem Maltese buyers will recognise: check whether “All duties included” appears at checkout, because if it does not, the extra bill arrives with the parcel (PostNL).

Who pays, who gains

The fairness argument is not invented. EU retailers operate inside a tax and compliance system that costs money. Non-EU platforms were using a duty-free threshold originally designed for the odd souvenir or small personal parcel, not for industrial-scale e-commerce. Germany’s federal government presents the reform as a way to level competition (Bundesregierung). German retail associations agree (Handelsblatt).

That logic has a Maltese angle. Small shops in Il-Belt, Sliema, Birkirkara or the village pjazza cannot compete with a platform that ships millions of low-value parcels into the EU while avoiding duties that ordinary importers face. For retailers already squeezed by rents, labour costs and a small domestic market, the EU’s move is a form of protection they could not impose alone.

But a flat fee is regressive by design. The same €3 hurts a €5 gadget far more than a €100 jacket. There is no EU-wide data showing who buys these parcels by income group, but the burden is likely to fall hardest on shoppers who depend most on ultra-low prices (biznes.wprost.pl). In Malta, that means the measure will not land as neatly as a pro-business correction. It will also be felt by households using these platforms because local retail is expensive.

The platforms are already moving. Polish reporting shows Shein and Temu shifting goods into EU warehouses, importing in bulk and distributing from inside the bloc, which avoids the per-parcel duty entirely (polsatnews.pl). That benefits European contract logistics (logistyka.rp.pl), but it also allows platforms to keep prices low enough to blunt the reform’s purpose.

The next question is national add-ons

Italy had planned its own €2 national charge on non-EU parcels but postponed it to October to avoid stacking it on top of the EU duty (Il Fatto Quotidiano). France suspended a similar €2 levy when the EU charge took effect (Le Figaro).

If governments revive their own parcel fees, shoppers will not be dealing with one clean EU rule. They will face a country-by-country stack of EU duty, VAT, courier fees and national surcharges. The EU has harmonised the customs charge. It has not harmonised what the buyer actually pays when the parcel reaches the door.