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The EU plans to levy a flat fee of €2 on billions of small packages entering the bloc, mainly from China, in a fresh blow to low-cost online retailers such as Temu and Shein.
Trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told the European parliament he had proposed the handling fee on Tuesday to offset the costs associated with the 4.6bn items annually imported directly to people’s homes.
The European Commission draft proposal, seen by the Financial Times, says the €2 fee would apply to purchases sent to consumers, but that items sent to warehouses would be taxed at €0.50.
Some of the revenues would cover the cost of the customs checks required by the growing volume of imports spurred by low-cost retailers, while the remaining money would go to the EU budget.
More than nine out of 10 packages imported to the EU come from China.
The move follows similar efforts by the US to crack down on low-cost imports by ending its “de minimis” regime, which exempts shipments worth less than $800 from tariffs and paperwork.
President Donald Trump initially removed the “de minimis” exemption in February, but this was reversed after US authorities said they did not have the resources to check all the parcels entering the country.
He removed the exemption again on May 2, making low-cost items bought online more expensive for American consumers.
In Brussels, Šefčovič told parliament that the “huge flood of parcels . . . represents a completely new challenge: to the control, to the safety, to make sure that the standards are properly checked”.
The bloc said there had been an increase in the number of dangerous and non-compliant goods available on the EU market as well as a rise in complaints by EU retailers of unfair competition.
Šefčovič said these imports created a “huge load” for customs officials. “I wouldn’t look at the handling here as a tax, it’s simply . . . compensation for the cost and it should be paid by the platform,” he said.
More than 1bn packages arrived into both the Netherlands and Belgium, the EU’s main logistics hubs, last year, according to figures obtained by the FT.
Anna Cavazzini, the German Green MEP who chairs the parliament’s internal market committee, told the FT she backed the plans.
“It’s important to get this under control,” she said. “It will incentivise sellers to use warehouses as they did before. It’s much easier for customs to check samples in a consignment than individual items.”
Temu and Shein, platforms that match Chinese producers directly with consumers to cut costs, did not respond to requests for comment.
Temu, which sells cheap household goods ranging from electrics to toys, this month stopped shipping low-cost items from China directly to US consumers after Trump’s trade crackdown.
Fast-fashion company Shein has also recently warned that its London listing would be delayed as it tried to restructure its US business model.
Member states are expected to add the fee to an overhaul of customs rules that would tighten controls and improve co-ordination across the single market.
As part of that reform, the EU will also scrap its own “de minimis” exemption from tariffs for parcels worth less than €150. That will force sellers on the online platforms to register for VAT, making them liable for goods quality as importers for the first time.
Commission officials hope the handling fee will help break deadlock over the reform, with some member states resisting the creation of an EU-wide customs authority.
The proposal was presented to the EU’s college of commissioners last week by its budget chief Piotr Serafin as one of multiple options for additional revenues to the EU budget.
The commission is under pressure to find direct funding streams, as opposed to money from member state governments, to pay off the joint borrowing used to create its €800bn post-Covid economic recovery fund.
The package levy “is not going to raise an enormous sum of money but every little helps”, according to a person briefed on the college discussion. “And it shows initiative and deals with an issue many are concerned about.”
Additional reporting by Henry Foy and Paola Tamma in Brussels
