EU plans 2-euro fee for parcels from China: Will the cheap prices remain?

Brussels. Temu, Shein, and Aliexpress are expected to pay: In light of the massive import of cheap products from China, the EU Commission is planning a customs clearance fee of €2 per parcel. The goal is to stem the flood of parcels while simultaneously being able to inspect more shipments for security defects. According to the EU Commission, in 2024 alone, more than 4.5 billion parcels below the duty-free limit of €150 were imported into the European Union – that's about 12 million shipments per day. Over 90 percent of these packages originate from China, many with a value of just a few euros or even cents.

The Commission's proposal for a corresponding change to EU customs regulations has been submitted to the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND). According to this proposal, national customs authorities would in future charge two euros per item entering the EU from a third country. If a package contains two different products, four euros would be charged – because both items must be inspected individually. For retailers considered particularly trustworthy, the fee could be reduced to 50 cents per item. An EU-wide IT system is intended to assist customs authorities in this process.

"Such a processing fee would at least be a first step towards better managing the flood of cheap packages," Bernd Lange (SPD), Chairman of the Trade Committee in the EU Parliament, told the RND. He calls for large platforms such as Temu, Shein, and Aliexpress to contribute more to the costs of customs and market surveillance authorities. However, Lange emphasizes that this is not about breaking up the companies or making their business more difficult. After all, Europe also benefits – European companies sell goods worth around 35 billion euros to Chinese customers annually via the Alibaba platform alone.

Currently, only a tiny fraction of parcels arriving from China are actually inspected by customs—approximately 0.00001 percent. Therefore, Chinese retailers face no serious risk of their products being withdrawn from circulation due to safety defects and not reaching their customers.

"There is no silver bullet, no scanner, no AI that can check billions of individual packages for compliance with EU standards," said Anna Cavazzini (Greens), chair of the Consumer Protection Committee in the European Parliament. "We must make it risky and expensive for exporters to send illegal goods to Europe. To do this, we must be able to inspect a significant percentage of goods at customs."

The planned fee is intended to specifically create incentives to import larger quantities of goods by container. This means the processing fee will only be charged once for that container, and consumers won't have to worry about higher prices. "It's just as time-consuming for customs to inspect a single package containing a toy purchased online as it is to inspect a box containing 1,000 of the same toy," Cavazzini explains the strategy. However, a container is easier to conduct random checks than millions of individual packages.

According to RND, the first Chinese traders have already reacted, even though the new regulation has not yet been adopted. For example, they are renting large warehouses near the port of Rotterdam to import goods in containers and resell them from there in the EU. Temu did not initially respond to RND's inquiry.

The EU's customs reform could be adopted by the European Parliament and member states before the end of this year. Traders will then have a transition period before they have to comply with the new regulations.