End of de minimis in the EU: what the €3 customs duty on small parcels changes, and what the first months show

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5.8 billion small parcels entered the EU without paying customs last year. On 1 July 2026, that number dropped to zero.

With its biggest customs reform since its creation in 1968, the EU has removed the €150 duty-free threshold, the so-called de minimis rules, and now applies a flat €3 customs duty per category of goods on small parcels imported from third countries. Every parcel entering the bloc faces customs formalities, regardless of its value. For brands shipping into Europe from a third country, that changes the economics of every order.

What changed for small parcels on 1 July

1. End of the €150 duty-free threshold: until now, a small parcel worth €150 or less entered the EU without paying customs. The de minimis rules no longer exist, and low-value shipments are no longer treated differently just because they are inexpensive. A customs declaration is required for every B2C parcel, whatever its value.

2. A flat €3 customs duty per category of goods: every small parcel worth €150 or less imported from a third country carries €3 per category of goods, meaning per HS code line. Inside one parcel, each type of item is taxed once: three items from different categories trigger three separate €3 duties. Above €150, and for all B2B shipments, standard customs duties continue to apply.

3. Higher penalties: online sellers and marketplaces that don't play by the new rules can face fines of up to 6% of their annual EU imports (European Parliament).

The French tax on small parcels offered a preview

On 1 March 2026, France introduced its small parcels tax: €2 on every parcel worth €150 or less shipped from a third country. Within a month, customs declarations at Roissy fell 92% and cargo flights from China to France dropped 60% (TLF union).

The imports didn't disappear. They rerouted through Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland, before making their way to France by truck. By May, French Customs estimated that roughly 90% of the original volume had simply rerouted. Revenue from the measure reached around €2.3M a month, a fraction of the €400M originally forecast (French Customs). On 30 June, the government announced it would suspend the small parcels tax from 1 July, the day the EU's €3 customs duty came into force.

In a unified market like the European one, when one country tightens its border, freight finds another route. When all 27 tighten their borders at once, there isn't another route.

Who is impacted

• •If you ship into the EU from a third country (👋 UK): every order now carries more customs friction than it did a few months ago, with slower clearance, added cost per parcel and more documentation.
• •If you run a high return rate: whether the €3 duty can be recovered on returned goods remains uncertain in many situations. On a category running 30 to 40% returns, that seemingly small fee becomes a meaningful margin leak.

What the end of de minimis changes in your operations

• •The HS code has to sit at SKU level, not category level: at category level it produces wrong duty calculations and goods held at the border.
• •The number of categories of goods in a parcel becomes a cost line: a €40 basket made of five categories carries €15 of customs duty, while a single €140 item carries €3.
• •Carriers bill their own clearance and duty advancement fees on top of the flat duty. Check the amount, the billing basis and the rebilling terms in your contracts.
• •Under DAP, duty is collected from the customer, which drives refused parcels and carrier returns. Under DDP, the brand absorbs it in its margin or shipping fees.
• •On returns, duty is not recovered automatically: a refund has to be claimed against proof of re-export.

What the first months of the small parcels duty show

Global air freight demand grew 6% in August, while China to Europe capacity fell almost 30% since June (Xeneta, Rotate, 2026). The first figures available point the same way:

• •Chinese small-parcel e-commerce exports fell 11% year on year in July, and 25% towards Europe, the steepest drop of any region (Xeneta, China Customs, 2026).
• •Belgium alone collected €170M of the new small parcels duty in July, 75% of it going to the EU budget (Belgian customs, 2026).
• •Joko, which tracks the bank transactions of 1.5 million people in France, found volumes falling sharply: Temu fell 50% between June and July, AliExpress 37% and Shein 15% (Joko, 2026).
• •Shein reported European revenue down 13.9% year on year in the second quarter, at 3.77 billion dollars (Reuters, 2026).

Those platforms had already rebuilt their European strategy: Shein opened its Wrocław hub in Poland, 740,000 sq m at full capacity (Shein, 2025), Temu is targeting 80% of its European sales shipped from local warehouses (Temu, 2026), and AliExpress now includes duties directly in its prices (Reuters, 2026).

The next changes: November 2026, then 2028

• •1 November 2026, Product Identifiers (PIDs): small parcels will require richer product identification for every item shipped, not just every parcel. The Merchant Product Identifier (your SKU) and a Non-Standardised Manufacturer Product Identifier become mandatory, plus standard identifiers such as GTIN, EAN or UPC where available. If your product data isn't clean today, the window to fix it closes three weeks before Black Friday.
• •1 November 2026, handling fee: around €2 per parcel on top of the €3 customs duty (European Commission, 2026).
• •Mid-2028, full reform: the temporary €3 flat duty is expected to disappear as the EU moves to full tariff-based customs processing through its new Customs Data Hub.

What didn't change

VAT rules haven't changed, IOSS still applies, and existing trade agreements (EU/UK TCA, EU/Japan, EU/Korea, EU/Turkey) can still provide preferential duties if your goods qualify. The reform raises customs scrutiny; it doesn't rewrite all of it.

How the brands ahead of this are adapting

The brands moving fastest didn't wait for July to discover what a €3-per-category customs duty does to their margin. They moved stock into Europe, closer to their customers, before the rule bit.

An EU hub does three things at once: it takes the per-parcel customs friction out of the equation for domestic EU orders, it speeds up delivery, and it lowers transport emissions. At Bigblue, the 600+ brands we operate ship from our European warehouse network (France, Spain, UK, Germany, Italy), with customs handled upstream on B2B flows and orders delivered domestically.