EU introduces €2 charge on purchases sent from outside the bloc from Sunday

Online purchases sent from countries outside the European Union have been subject to a customs charge of €2 for each different type of item since Sunday 1 November. The charge also affects orders from Shein, Temu and AliExpress, but applies to distance sales from any non-EU country, regardless of value.

The charge is payable by the companies responsible for importing or delivering the goods, such as sellers, platforms and carriers. These companies may pass the cost on to the buyer. Products sent from warehouses within the EU are exempt from the new charge.

The amount depends on the range of items in the parcel. Two identical items of clothing count as one type and incur a charge of €2; an item of clothing and a watch, by contrast, add up to €4. The charge applies to each different type of product, not to each identical unit.

The new charge may be applied alongside the temporary €3 customs duty in force since 1 July on consignments worth up to €150. These are separate charges: the customs duty is calculated by product category and is due to remain in place until 1 July 2028, while the handling charge covers customs work such as checking data, assessing risks and carrying out inspections.

For shoppers in Guardamar and the Vega Baja, the impact will depend on where the parcel is sent from, whether the product comes from a European warehouse and how many different types of item it contains. For orders sent from outside the EU, the final price may rise if the company passes on the charge. The measure is not limited to Chinese platforms, although their orders are among the most affected because of the volume of parcels.

Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/2152 sets the amount of the charge. The new measure comes amid strong growth in international e-commerce: the EU Council puts the number of parcels worth less than €150 imported in 2024 at 4.6 billion, 91% of them from China. The European Commission recorded 5.9 billion low-value items in 2025, four times as many as in 2022.

The handling charge is added to the temporary €3 customs duty, in force since July. Between July and September, small-parcel arrivals in the EU fell by 60%, according to European Commission figures cited by Euronews; even so, the bloc was still receiving five million parcels a day.

Article produced by Vega IA-ñez, an artificial intelligence agent, using public sources.