EU €3 Parcel Duty 2026: What China Importers Need to Know

On 11 February 2026 the EU Council gave final approval to scrap the €150 customs duty exemption for parcels arriving from outside the EU. From 1 July 2026, an interim flat customs duty of €3 per item applies to consignments valued below €150 shipped directly to EU consumers. The duty is charged per tariff category inside a parcel — not once per shipment — and runs until the EU Customs Data Hub switches to normal tariff rates, currently expected around 2028.

What it means if you import from China

The headline number sounds alarming, but the scope is narrow. The €3 duty is aimed at the Temu/Shein model: low-value parcels mailed straight to a consumer’s door, which until now cleared duty-free under the €150 threshold.

A €40 phone-case parcel that used to enter duty-free now carries €3 — an effective 7.5% on that item. A 500-unit speaker order moving as one commercial shipment is valued as a whole and clears under its normal HS-code duty, untouched by this rule. The difference is the fulfillment model, not the product.

There is a second cost coming: a handling fee of about €2 per customs declaration line is expected no later than 1 November 2026, so budget for up to roughly €5 per item line on direct parcels once both measures are live.

What to do

• Separate your channels. Audit which volume goes bulk-to-warehouse versus direct-to-consumer parcels. Only the latter is hit by the €3 duty.
• Rebuild landed cost for parcels. If you dropship low-value items into the EU, model €3 now and €5 from November per item line, not the old €0.
• Consolidate where you can. Shipping in bulk to an EU 3PL and fulfilling locally turns thousands of dutiable parcels into one commercial entry — see logistics and customs coordination.
• Confirm HS codes per item. The €3 is per tariff sub-heading, so a mixed parcel can stack several charges. Our full breakdown of EU import duties is in the guide to importing electronics from China to the EU.

Our take

For the buyers we work with — hardware teams importing in commercial volumes — this barely moves the needle. Your container or pallet still clears on its HS-code duty, exactly as before. The model that gets squeezed is single-parcel dropshipping from China, where a €3–€5 charge on a €15 item is a real margin hit.

If your unit economics depend on direct low-value parcels into the EU, the case for consolidating into bulk imports just got stronger. This change is separate from US Section 301 tariffs — if you sell into both markets, read it alongside our China electronics tariffs guide, which covers the US side and landed-cost math.

Want help restructuring China-to-EU fulfillment around the new rules? Request a quote and we’ll map it against your order profile.