EU imposes €3 duty on low-value imports from China

The European Union has imposed a new flat customs duty on low-value goods imported from outside the bloc, a move targeting the flood of cheap parcels from Chinese e-commerce platforms like Temu, Shein, and AliExpress. The fee, which took effect on July 1, 2026, ends a longstanding duty-free exemption for shipments valued at 150 euros or less.

Under the new rules, a 3-euro customs duty applies per item or per customs classification within a shipment, not per parcel. This means a package containing three different types of items would incur a 9-euro charge, while multiple identical items count as a single item for the fee. The measure is a temporary bridge policy, set to remain in force until July 1, 2028, when the EU plans to implement a more comprehensive customs overhaul.

The change addresses what EU officials and lawmakers describe as an unfair competitive advantage. The duty-free exemption, known as the de minimis threshold, was established in 2008 to reduce paperwork but was not designed for the current scale of cross-border e-commerce. The volume of low-value parcels entering the EU under this exemption surged from an estimated 1.4 billion in 2022 to 5.8 billion in 2025,...