“EU’s €3 Parcel Duty Is Working: Chinese Import Volumes Drop 30-40%”

The EU’s new € 3 customs duty on low-value parcels appears to be doing exactly what it was designed to do. Since the flat duty took effect on 1 July 2026, imports of small parcels from China have dropped by 30 to 40 percent overall – and in the Netherlands specifically, volumes have nearly halved, according to the Dutch Ministry of Finance.

WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED ON 1 JULY 2026

The € 150 de minimis exemption, under which consignments entered the EU duty-free, ended on 1 July 2026. In its place, a temporary flat customs duty of € 3 per item now applies, calculated per tariff line (HS6) rather than per parcel – so an order spanning several product categories can attract the duty more than once.

The legal basis is Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, implemented in detail by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1200 of 5 June 2026. The flat duty applies until 1 July 2028, when the EU Customs Data Hub for e-commerce is expected to be operational and full classification-based duties take over, based on HS code and origin.

THE WIDER REFORM HAS NOW BEEN FORMALLY ADOPTED BY THE COUNCIL

On 3 September 2026, the Council of the EU gave its final approval to the full UCC reform package – a significant step beyond the political agreement reached on 26 March 2026. The European Parliament still needs to formally approve the text this month, after which it will be published in the Official Journal. The legislation then comes into full application 12 months after publication.

New in the final text: a penalty regime of up to 6% of annual EU turnover for e-commerce platforms that systematically fail to meet their customs obligations. The deemed importer status for platforms – already agreed in substance – is now formally locked in. The new EU Customs Authority in Lille becomes operational in 2027; the EU Customs Data Hub becomes mandatory for e-commerce businesses from 1 July 2028 and for all other traders from 1 March 2034.

DO NOT CONFUSE THE € 3 DUTY WITH THE UNION HANDLING FEE

A fair amount of coverage still conflates the € 3 duty with the separately announced Union handling fee. These are two legally distinct instruments. The € 3 charge is a customs duty, calculated per item based on tariff classification. The Union handling fee – its level to be set via a Commission delegated act – is not a customs duty but a fee to cover customs supervision costs, calculated per consignment, and must be applied by member states no later than 1 November 2026.

As covered in our earlier reporting, the Netherlands has decided against adding a national surcharge on top of these EU-wide measures.

THE MARKET DATA: SHARP FALLS, BUT VERY DIFFERENT BY PLATFORM

According to French customs figures cited by Euronews on 27 August, EU imports of small parcels have fallen 30 to 40 percent since the duty took effect – but the picture varies sharply by platform: Temu down 50%, AliExpress down 37%, and Shein down just 15%. In the Netherlands specifically, the inflow of individual parcels from China has nearly halved since 1 July, Dutch State Secretary for Finance Eelco Eerenberg told parliament in early September.

According to the European Commission, around 4.6 billion such consignments entered the EU in 2024 – roughly 12 million parcels a day – a figure that climbed further to almost 5.9 billion in 2025. The Commission estimates that up to 65% of these shipments were deliberately undervalued to escape customs scrutiny.

WHY SHEIN HAS BEEN HIT LESS HARD THAN TEMU AND ALI EXPRESS

Shein opened a 740,000 square-metre logistics hub near Wrocław, Poland, back in December 2025 – well ahead of the duty – and expanded further with a site in Cannock, UK, in May 2026, as part of a stated € 250 million, five-year European infrastructure investment. This head start allowed Shein to shift part of its supply to bulk B2B shipments before the duty took effect, which goes a long way towards explaining why its sales decline (-15%) is markedly smaller than Temu’s (-50%) or AliExpress’s (-37%), both of which made the shift later.

By way of comparison, Temu was already fined € 200 million in May 2026 under the Digital Services Act for failing to adequately assess the risk of unsafe products on its platform, including children’s toys with excessive chemical levels. This shows that enforcement against these platforms was already under way before the customs reform, and that the two regulatory tracks now compound the risk of non-compliant behaviour.

AliExpress, meanwhile, has added “price includes duties and VAT” labelling to product listings.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR EU IMPORTERS, MARKETPLACES AND LOGISTICS PROVIDERS

• Product identifiers (PIDs) – a standardised merchant code, manufacturer code and, where available, barcode or GTIN – become mandatory from 1 November 2026; check whether your systems and those of your suppliers can already supply them
• Note the penalty regime of up to 6% of annual EU turnover for platforms that systematically fail their customs obligations – relevant both to platforms themselves and to sellers whose market access depends on that platform’s deemed importer status
• Consider, as Shein has done, whether an EU warehousing model built around bulk shipments can mitigate the new cost structure – early investment appears to translate into a measurable competitive advantage
• Remember that the € 3 duty is calculated per HS6 tariff line: mixed orders may attract the duty more than once per consignment
• Track the final adoption of the Union handling fee this autumn – it comes on top of, not instead of, the € 3 duty
• Watch for the European Parliament’s vote this month and subsequent publication in the Official Journal: this determines when the full reform, including deemed importer status, actually takes effect

THE BOTTOM LINE

The market data confirms that the EU’s flat duty is genuinely denting the volume of cheap parcels arriving from China – with the Netherlands among the clearest examples. With the Council’s final adoption of the reform, a penalty regime of up to 6% of turnover, mandatory product identifiers from November 2026, and the incoming Union handling fee, this is the moment for platforms, sellers and logistics providers to look beyond the immediate cost impact and review the operating model behind EU-facing e-commerce as a whole. For the broader compliance context, see our articles on the EU customs reform (https://smarttradecompliance.com/2026/05/11/eu-customs-reform/) and on preparing for an AEO re-assessment (https://smarttradecompliance.com/2026/05/08/preparing-for-an-aeo-re-assessment-without-disrupting-operations/).

Smart Trade Compliance advises platforms, sellers and logistics providers on EU e-commerce customs compliance. Have questions about what this means for your organisation? Contact us. (https://smarttradecompliance.com/contact)