Is the EU's €3 customs duty charged per parcel?

No. The Commission's own guidance describes it as €3 per declared item, meaning per declaration line — each group of goods sharing the same tariff classification, description and origin. Five identical shirts on one line pay €3 once; a shirt and a pair of jeans are two lines and pay €6.

When did the EU's €150 customs duty exemption end?

On 1 July 2026. The duty relief for consignments with an intrinsic value up to €150 was replaced by a flat €3 charge under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, which is scheduled to run until 1 July 2028.

Who has to pay the EU's €3 duty on low-value parcels?

The declarant. The Commission's guidance names the seller or importer — the IOSS holder, the special-arrangements user, or their indirect representative. On a normal distance sale the consumer is not the debtor, although some retailers pass the charge on in the price.

What is the EU handling fee due by 1 November 2026?

A Union handling fee on distance sales of goods imported into the EU, provided for by the new Union Customs Code, Regulation (EU) 2026/2108, and to be introduced no later than 1 November 2026. A draft Commission delegated regulation of 21 September 2026 sets it at €2 per item with no value ceiling, but that draft is still open to objection by Parliament and the Council.

Is the EU's €2 handling fee the same as Austria's €2 parcel tax?

No. The EU handling fee is a customs charge per item on distance sales imported from outside the EU, owed by the declarant. Austria's Paketsteuer is a national tax of €2 per parcel delivered to an Austrian consumer whatever its origin, owed only by sellers and marketplaces above €100 million of Austrian distance sales. They have different bases, different debtors and different legal homes.

KontorBund — Note The EU's €3 duty on low-value parcels
Last checked 4 October 2026
kontorbund.com/notes/eu-low-value-parcel-charges.html

The Library

The EU's €3 duty on low-value parcels — and the fee due by 1 November 2026

Last checked4 October 2026

KeeperOpen — keeper wanted

StatusDuty in force — the fee is still a draft

The short version

Since 1 July 2026 the EU's customs duty relief for consignments worth up to €150 is gone, replaced by a flat €3. It is not €3 a parcel: the Commission's own guidance says €3 per declared item, which means per declaration line — so one parcel holding a shirt and a pair of jeans pays €6. It runs to 1 July 2028, and on a normal distance sale the debtor is the declarant — the seller or importer — not your customer. A second charge, a Union handling fee, must be in place by 1 November 2026; a draft delegated act of 21 September 2026 puts it at €2 per item with no €150 ceiling, and that draft can still be objected to. None of this is Austria's €2 parcel tax, and none of it touches your EPR or product-safety duties.

What the €3 duty actually is

The charge is a flat-rate customs duty under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, which the Council adopted on 11 February 2026. A Commission delegated act of 30 April 2026 and an implementing act published in the Official Journal on 8 June 2026 fill in how it is declared and collected. We have read the Commission's guidance and its Access2Markets notice for this page; we have not opened the Official Journal text itself, and everything below is as those two official pages state it.

What ended: The customs duty relief for consignments of an intrinsic value up to €150. For distance sales it stopped applying on 1 July 2026.
How much: €3, flat. Not a percentage, and not related to the value of the goods beyond the €150 ceiling.
Per what: Per declared item — and "item" is a declaration line: each group of goods sharing the same tariff classification, description and origin, however many units it contains. Five identical shirts on one line pay €3 once. A shirt and a pair of jeans are two lines and pay €6.
Which sales: Distance sales to consumers of goods imported into the EU with an intrinsic value of €150 or less — whatever the VAT route: IOSS, the special arrangements, or ordinary import VAT. It reaches declaration types H1, H6 and H7.
Who owes it: The declarant. The Commission's guidance names it as "the seller or importer" — the IOSS holder, the special-arrangements user, or their indirect representative. Some retailers pass it to the buyer; that is a pricing decision, not the instrument allocating it.
Newly in scope: Goods that used to sit outside the low-value relief by category — alcohol, perfumes and tobacco — are inside the €3 regime.
Out of scope: Goods covered by a preferential trade agreement or a customs-union measure, where VAT is not collected through IOSS and the goods are declared on an H1.
How long: 1 July 2026 to 1 July 2028, when the EU Customs Data Hub is due to take over e-commerce. It is described as transitional and can be extended if the Hub is late.
Stated aims: Unfair competition, customs fraud, unsafe products, and the environmental impact of the sheer volume of individual parcels.

The "per item" point is the one worth getting right. Almost every report of this charge calls it €3 a parcel, and a one-line consignment is indeed €3. A mixed basket is not. If you sell assortments — a card, a candle and a tin in one box are three tariff lines — your landed cost per order rose by a multiple of €3, not by €3.

The fee due by 1 November

This is a second, separate charge, and it is not a customs duty. The new Union Customs Code — Regulation (EU) 2026/2108 — empowers the Commission to set a fixed handling fee per item for distance sales of goods imported into the Union, and the fee must be introduced no later than 1 November 2026.

The amount — not yet final: A draft Commission delegated regulation of 21 September 2026 sets it at €2 per item. A delegated act passes through a scrutiny period in which Parliament or the Council may object. We have not found it in the Official Journal, so treat €2 as the proposed figure rather than the law.
No value ceiling: Unlike the €3 duty, the fee is drafted to apply to distance-sale consignments whether their value is below or above €150. This is the part most coverage misses.
Who pays: The declarant. Because the reform makes platforms the importer for sales they facilitate, press coverage attributes the fee to Shein, Temu and AliExpress — the Swiss Post report says so expressly.
What it is for: The cost of customs supervision: collecting and checking customs data, risk analysis, documentary and physical controls, and keeping the infrastructure running. It is a cost-recovery fee, not a tariff.

1 November is a double deadline. The same date makes product identifiers (PIDs) mandatory on import distance-sale declarations; they have been accepted voluntarily since 1 July 2026. If you ship into the EU, that is a data change on the declaration your representative files, and it falls due whether or not the handling fee is finalised in time.

Platforms as importers

The €3 duty was a stop-gap agreed in December 2025. The structural change is the customs reform: Regulation (EU) 2026/2108, adopted by the Parliament and the Council on 16 September 2026, published in the Official Journal on 19 September 2026 and in force from 20 September 2026 — on the Commission's own description the most comprehensive reform of the Customs Union since 1968.

Its e-commerce core is that a platform facilitating a distance sale of goods from outside the EU is treated as the importer. Liability for customs duty and import VAT moves off the consumer and the courier and onto the platform, which collects at checkout — the same shift IOSS already made for VAT. For a seller on such a platform, that is the difference between your buyer meeting a surprise bill at the door and the platform pricing the charge in.

We cannot tell you when that starts

Our sources give three different answers and we are not going to pick one. Most provisions of the regulation are described as applying from 21 September 2027, and one summary puts the deemed-importer rule there. The Commission's own reform page ties the e-commerce reporting through the EU Customs Data Hub to 1 July 2028. An account of the March 2026 provisional agreement described a voluntary opt-in for platforms rather than automatic importer status. Do not plan around a date taken from this page — take it from the regulation.

What has happened so far

Three months in, the numbers are estimates rather than published statistics, and they disagree with each other by a wide margin. Here they are with their owners attached.

Small-parcel imports, EU-wide: Down 30–40% according to French customs. BEUC's Lea Auffret cites estimates of 30–70%. Both are attributed figures, not an official series.
Liège airport: Arrivals of small parcels from Shein and Temu halved, as reported by RTBF.
Swiss Post: CEO Pascal Grieder, 3 October 2026: EU-bound parcels fell by a "mid-double-digit percentage", and he expects volumes to normalise to some extent.
The volume behind that: Swiss Post now carries 100 million more parcels a year than ten years ago: 60 million from large European carriers, 20 million from small shops, 20 million from China. The Chinese share of its parcel volume rose from 6% to 11%.
Prices: Temu itemises the charge separately; Shein raised prices to absorb it. Analyst Juozas Kaziukėnas: "the final customer is paying the tariffs. It's not the importer or the retailer."
Marketing: Both platforms cut their European push sharply, and their apps fell out of the top 100 in European app stores.
Where the goods went instead: Shein opened a large logistics hub near Wrocław in 2025; Temu is building EU warehouses. Grieder's point is the obvious one: a duty on imports does not reach goods that are already inside the Union.

"This tariff is directed at all third countries — and thus also affects local exporters." That is Grieder, and it is the sentence a small seller outside the EU should read twice. This was reported as a measure against Chinese platforms. It is a measure on third-country imports, so a Swiss, British, Norwegian or American shop shipping one parcel into the Union is inside it on exactly the same terms.

If you are inside the EU and competing with those platforms, the price gap has narrowed. The warehousing shift is the part to watch, though: it does not remove the competition, it moves it inside your own rules — where it meets the same EPR, packaging and product-safety duties you do, and where customs charges on imports no longer reach it.

Not Austria's €2 — and France's levy

There are now two different €2 charges on parcels in Europe and they have nothing to do with each other. Four charges, side by side:

Charge	Basis	Amount	Who owes it	Since
EU flat customs duty	Per declared item, consignment of €150 or less imported into the EU	€3	The declarant — seller or importer	1 Jul 2026, to 1 Jul 2028
EU Union handling fee	Per item, distance sale imported into the EU, any value	€2 — draft	The declarant; platforms, as importers	Due by 1 Nov 2026
Austria's Paketsteuer	Per parcel delivered to an Austrian consumer — origin irrelevant	€2, or €2.40 once passed on with VAT	Sellers and marketplaces above €100m of Austrian distance sales	1 Oct 2026
France's ultra-fast-fashion levy	Per item, on a scale set by the product's score	€0.50–€12 in 2026, up to €19.50 by 2030	The platform	1 Sep 2026

Charge

Basis

Amount

Who owes it

Since

EU flat customs duty

Per declared item, consignment of €150 or less imported into the EU

€3

The declarant — seller or importer

1 Jul 2026, to 1 Jul 2028

EU Union handling fee

Per item, distance sale imported into the EU, any value

€2 — draft

The declarant; platforms, as importers

Due by 1 Nov 2026

Austria's Paketsteuer

Per parcel delivered to an Austrian consumer — origin irrelevant

€2, or €2.40 once passed on with VAT

Sellers and marketplaces above €100m of Austrian distance sales

1 Oct 2026

France's ultra-fast-fashion levy

Per item, on a scale set by the product's score

€0.50–€12 in 2026, up to €19.50 by 2030

The platform

1 Sep 2026

Austria's is a national tax, not the EU fee. It is owed on a parcel posted in Vienna to a customer in Graz, and not owed at all by a shop under €100 million — while the EU charges are owed on a single parcel from a one-person workshop outside the Union. The full picture of the Austrian tax — why it reads as €2.40, who is caught, returns, the court challenges — is in our note on the Paketsteuer, and the packaging side is on the Austria desk.

France's levy comes from a law passed by the French parliament in June 2026 and in force from 1 September 2026. "Ultra-fast fashion" is identified by two criteria — the volume of clothing placed on the market, and the cost of repairing a garment relative to its price — and the per-item amount follows a scale: €0.50 for underwear, €2 for a T-shirt, €9 for jeans, €12 for a jacket, rising to as much as €19.50 per item by 2030 and capped at 50% of the pre-tax price. Euronews reports it does not reach European retailers such as H&M or Zara; BEUC describes it as an eco-contribution on the polluter-pays principle. See also the France desk.

We will not add these up for you

The four charges have different bases, different debtors and different legal homes, and nothing we have read makes them mutually exclusive. We have found no official statement on how the EU charges interact with national levies such as Austria's or France's, so we are not going to print a total for a shirt shipped from outside the EU to an Austrian buyer. If you have a declaration or an invoice that shows how they actually land together, that is exactly what this page is missing.

What we could not establish

Everything above is sourced. These are the things that are not, and we would rather print the gap than fill it.

Whether the €2 fee is actually €2: The figure comes from a draft delegated regulation of 21 September 2026 and from one press report attributing it to a Commission document that is neither linked nor dated. We did not find the final act in the Official Journal. The 1 November 2026 deadline is confirmed by the Commission; the amount is not.
When platforms become importers: 21 September 2027, 1 July 2028 or an opt-in — see above. Unresolved.
Who owes the €3 on an ordinary postal parcel: The Commission's guidance names the declarant — the seller or importer. One German law-firm summary describes the duty as falling on the recipient for postal consignments under the Universal Postal Convention. We have not reconciled the two, and the difference matters if you ship by post outside IOSS.
Whether it really ends in 2028: 1 July 2028 is the date in the instrument, tied to the Customs Data Hub, and it is extendable if the Hub is late. What replaces it is the ordinary tariff with no value threshold — not a flat €3.
How the charges stack: No official statement found on the interaction between the EU charges and national parcel levies.
The Official Journal text: We could not open the consolidated text of Regulation (EU) 2026/382 or the Council's own press release. The dates, basis and debtor on this page come from the Commission's guidance page and its Access2Markets notice, both official, both secondary to the instrument.

Known traps

"It's €3 a parcel"

It is €3 per declared item, which is per declaration line. One tariff line in the box, €3. Three tariff lines, €9. The number of physical units on a line does not change it.

"My customer pays it"

On a normal distance sale the debtor is the declarant — you, your importer, or your indirect representative. Shein raising prices and Temu printing a line at checkout are both pass-through, not the law naming the buyer.

"Under €150 I'm still fine"

The relief under €150 is precisely what ended on 1 July 2026. And the handling fee, as drafted, has no value ceiling at all — it is meant to apply above €150 too.

"The €2 is the Austrian parcel tax"

Two unrelated charges that happen to share a number. Different basis, different debtor, different legal home — and a parcel can meet both.

"It only hits the Chinese platforms"

It is a charge on third-country imports. A Swiss, British, Norwegian or American seller shipping one parcel into the Union is inside it on identical terms, which is the Swiss Post complaint in a sentence.

"So this replaces my EPR registration"

No. This is customs. Your packaging registration, your authorised representative and your product-safety duties are untouched — see EPR and PPWR and GPSR in plain language.

Sources

The Commission's own pages first, then the trade and press reports we rely on for the figures and for anything the instruments do not say.

European Commission, Taxation and Customs Union — Guidance and legal text on the temporary flat fee on low-value imports, applying until 1 July 2028 Official. Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, the delegated act of 30 April 2026, the implementing act published 8 June 2026; the per-item basis, the scope across VAT regimes, and the declarant as debtor. Read for this page
European Commission, Access2Markets — EU applies €3 customs duty per item on low-value e-commerce consignments Official. "Item" as a declaration line; the €150 intrinsic value; declaration types H1, H6 and H7; Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1200; expiry on 1 July 2028; product identifiers mandatory from 1 November 2026. Read for this page
European Commission, Taxation and Customs Union — EU Customs Reform Official. Adoption on 16 September 2026, platforms as importers for distance sales, the Customs Data Hub timetable, and the Union handling fee due by 1 November 2026 with its amount left to a delegated act
KPMG — EU customs reform enters into force, with new e-commerce rules Secondary. Official Journal publication on 19 September 2026 and entry into force on 20 September 2026; the handling fee's November date and its delegated act
VATupdate — European Commission sets proposed EU customs handling fee at €2 per e-commerce item Secondary. The €2 figure and the draft delegated regulation of 21 September 2026, Regulation (EU) 2026/2108 as the basis, the declarant as payer, the absence of a €150 ceiling, and that the draft is still open to scrutiny
Ebner Stolz — New flat-rate customs duty on goods in low-value consignments from July 2026 Secondary. Council adoption on 11 February 2026 and the duty read as one €3 per six-digit tariff subheading — and the "recipient is liable" description for postal consignments that we could not reconcile with the Commission guidance
Anadolu Agency — Cheap no more: what do the EU's new e-commerce rules mean for low-price platforms? Secondary. The 30–40% (French customs) and 30–70% (BEUC) estimates, Liège via RTBF, the Wrocław hub, Juozas Kaziukėnas, and France's levy on the polluter-pays principle
SWI swissinfo.ch — EU parcel tax "will not slow Chinese retailers": Swiss Post boss Secondary. Pascal Grieder on 3 October 2026: the volume fall, the expected normalisation, Temu's European warehouses, and Swiss Post's parcel breakdown
bluewin.ch — Post feels the impact of the EU flat-rate customs duty on packages from non-EU countries Secondary. The €2 figure attributed to an undated, unlinked Commission document, Shein, Temu and AliExpress as payers, and Grieder on the tariff reaching all third countries. Prints no year for the July start
Euronews — Shein and Temu items could face €20 levy in France's crackdown on ultra-fast fashion Secondary. The French levy in force on 1 September 2026, the two criteria, the 2026 scale, the €19.50 maximum by 2030 and the 50% cap
VATupdate — EU customs reform: platforms as deemed importers Secondary. The 21 September 2027 date for the deemed-importer rule, which we could not confirm against the Commission's own timetable

Help us keep this page honest

Two things would improve it more than any amount of further reading. First, a customs declaration or carrier invoice that shows how the €3 was actually counted on a mixed consignment — how many lines, how many times €3. Second, the final delegated act on the handling fee, once it appears in the Official Journal, so we can replace a draft figure with a real one.

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