The EU Temu and Shein parcel fee will add a fixed €3 (DKK 22.4; SEK 32.7) customs duty to low-value e-commerce consignments worth less than €150 (DKK 1,120; SEK 1,633) entering the bloc from third countries from 1 July 2026, EU member states agreed on Friday. The measure is designed to curb a surge in small parcels—often linked to platforms such as Temu and Shein—and to reduce the competitive advantage created by the current duty-free threshold.
The Council today agreed to apply a fixed customs duty of €3 on small parcels valued at less than €150 entering the EU, largely via e-commerce, from 1 July 2026.
What the EU Temu and Shein parcel fee covers
Under the deal agreed by EU finance ministers, a fixed €3 (DKK 22.4; SEK 32.7) customs duty will apply to small consignments valued below €150 (DKK 1,120; SEK 1,633). The duty is temporary and will remain in place until a broader EU customs reform is operational.
A key detail is that the charge is applied per item—based on the product’s tariff heading—when several different goods are included in the same consignment. In practice, that means a single parcel containing multiple distinct items can be charged more than once.
The duty will initially apply to goods sold by non-EU traders registered in the EU’s Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS) system (a VAT scheme designed to simplify VAT declarations on low-value e-commerce). EU ministers said this covers the vast majority of e-commerce flows into the EU, while the European Commission may later assess whether the fixed duty should be extended to traders outside IOSS.
Why low-value parcels became a customs headache
EU institutions have increasingly framed the low-value parcel surge as a problem for both the single market and consumer protection.
At present, parcels shipped directly to EU consumers from third countries and valued below €150 (DKK 1,120; SEK 1,633) are exempt from customs duties, even though they are still subject to VAT and require customs declarations. EU officials argue that the exemption no longer reflects how cross-border e-commerce works and has become a structural advantage for non-EU platforms that ship directly to consumers.
The Council of the EU has also pointed to a customs enforcement challenge: estimates cited by the Council suggest that up to 65% of small parcels entering the EU may be undervalued, which reduces duties owed when goods exceed the threshold and complicates risk-based controls.
How the €150 exemption supported ultra-cheap imports
The duty-free threshold helped popularise an e-commerce model built around micro-shipments: instead of importing goods in bulk into European warehouses, sellers can split orders into individual parcels and ship them directly to consumers.
EU officials have linked the model to broader policy concerns:
- Unfair competition for EU-based retailers that import in bulk and pay duties where applicable.
- Health and safety risks, as customs and market surveillance authorities struggle to check a rapidly growing number of small consignments.
- Fraud incentives, including undervaluation and misdeclaration.
- Environmental costs, because parcel-by-parcel logistics can increase packaging and transport impacts.
According to figures cited by EU officials, a large share of low-value e-commerce consignments entering the EU originate in China—an increase that has coincided with the rapid growth of platforms such as Temu and Shein.
What the new duty may mean for prices and checks
For consumers, the immediate implication is a likely increase in the final price of many low-cost online purchases, depending on the number of items in a parcel and how sellers adjust prices. EU officials have not presented the fixed duty as a consumer tax, but as an enforcement and competitiveness tool.
For authorities, the measure is also meant to bring a clearer and simpler customs mechanism to a category of imports that has become hard to control at scale. EU finance ministers have emphasised that the fixed duty is a stopgap: it aims to create a workable tool before the EU can apply normal product-specific tariffs to every low-value item entering the single market.
Nordic cooperation on product safety and enforcement
Nordic governments have been among those pushing for stronger action on the flow of low-value imports. In Sweden, Denmark and Norway, authorities have highlighted recurring concerns around product safety and compliance in the platform economy.
In March 2025, the Swedish government said Sweden, Denmark and Norway would cooperate to stop products considered harmful to health and the environment from platforms including Temu and Shein, signalling that the issue is seen not only as a trade question but also as an enforcement one.
The Council’s earlier agreement on scrapping the duty-free threshold was also publicly welcomed by Denmark’s then minister for economic affairs, Stephanie Lose, who argued that duties should be paid “from the first euro” to strengthen fair competition.
Next steps in the EU customs reform timeline
EU ministers describe the €3 (DKK 22.4; SEK 32.7) duty as a temporary bridge toward a more comprehensive reform that would remove the duty-free threshold altogether and rely on new EU-level customs data infrastructure.
The longer-term plan—agreed politically in November 2025—links the end of the €150 (DKK 1,120; SEK 1,633) relief to the rollout of an EU Customs Data Hub, intended to help calculate customs debt on a per-item basis and strengthen controls across member states.
For retailers, the reform is intended to narrow a competitive gap created by different import models. For regulators, it is also part of a broader attempt to align customs rules with today’s e-commerce reality—where millions of small parcels cross borders every day.
If the fixed duty is implemented on schedule in mid-2026, it will mark a concrete shift in how the EU treats low-value platform imports. The next political test will be whether member states and the European Parliament can finalise the wider customs reform quickly enough for the temporary solution to remain truly temporary—and whether it delivers the promised improvements in compliance and enforcement across the single market.
