EU De Minimis Ends: €3 Customs Duty per Item Since 1 July 2026

If you shop on AliExpress, Temu or Shein, your orders now cost more. Since 1 July 2026 the EU has scrapped the customs duty exemption for consignments worth up to €150 and replaced it with a flat duty of €3 per item. An earlier version of this article, published in April 2026, described the change as a proposal still working its way through the legislative process. That is no longer the case, so the article was rewritten in September 2026 to reflect the rules now in force.

What the €150 de minimis rule was

Until 30 June 2026, goods imported into the EU from outside the union were exempt from customs duty if the consignment was worth no more than €150. The relief was designed for a world of occasional low-value purchases and gifts, where collecting a few cents of duty cost customs authorities more than it raised.

VAT was a separate matter. The old €22 VAT exemption was removed on 1 July 2021, when the Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS) was introduced, so import VAT has applied from the first euro ever since. Only the duty relief survived, and that is what has now gone.

Why the EU removed it

The volume of low-value e-commerce parcels grew far beyond what the relief was designed for. According to the European Commission, 4.6 billion such packages entered the EU market in 2024 and 5.9 billion in 2025, an increase of more than a quarter in a single year.

The Commission gives several reasons for acting. Many low-value parcels were undervalued or falsely declared to avoid duty. The exemption gave non-EU sellers an advantage over businesses that manufacture or sell in the EU and pay duty in full. And product safety was a growing concern: in a coordinated control operation cited by the Commission, 64% of the toys and small electronics checked did not comply with EU rules. The Council of the EU agreed on 12 December 2025 to levy duty on small parcels from 1 July 2026.

What applies since 1 July 2026

The €150 duty exemption was abolished on 1 July 2026 and replaced by a temporary flat customs duty of €3 per item on goods in consignments worth up to €150.

• Scope: distance sales of imported goods, such as online purchases from non-EU sellers, where the goods are dispatched from outside the EU after you order.
• VAT scheme: the duty applies regardless of whether the seller uses IOSS, the special arrangements or standard import VAT.
• Who declares and pays: the seller or importer. If a platform does not collect it at checkout, expect to settle it with the carrier before delivery, alongside import VAT.
• Exclusion: goods benefiting from a preferential trade agreement or Customs Union arrangement are outside the flat duty, provided VAT was not collected through IOSS.
• Above €150: nothing changes. Standard tariff rates apply according to the type of goods.

What counts as an item

An item is not a parcel and not a single unit. The duty is charged per tariff classification, not per quantity, so identical goods count once however many you buy. The first two rows below are the European Commission’s own examples:

Contents of the consignment	Items	Duty
5 identical T-shirts	1	€3
3 T-shirts and a watch	2	€6
8 different small articles worth €40	8	€24

The consequence is counter-intuitive: the more varied your basket, the more duty you pay. Eight different €5 articles attract €24, more than half the value of the order, while a single €140 purchase clears with €3.

The handling fee still to come

Duty is not the only new charge. The Commission has proposed a separate Union handling fee, due to apply from autumn 2026, and stresses that it is a fee rather than a customs duty. Its amount and exact start date had not been set at the time of writing. Czechia’s customs administration expects collection to begin on 1 November 2026, per item and on consignments of any value, with the amount fixed shortly after the new Union Customs Code is published.

This fee is separate from the clearance charges that carriers and postal operators bill for handling your customs paperwork, which continue to apply on top.

What happens in 2028

The €3 flat duty is explicitly temporary. It is due to apply until 1 July 2028, when the EU Customs Data Hub is expected to go live and low-value consignments will be assessed at normal duty rates by type of goods: typically 0–4% for electronics and around 12% for clothing. From that point the duty on a cheap order will depend on what you buy rather than on how many different things are in the box.

What it means for Temu, Shein and AliExpress orders

• Cheap small articles are hit hardest. On a €5 item, €3 of duty adds 60%. On a single €100 purchase it adds 3%.
• Split orders no longer pay off. Five identical T-shirts in one consignment attract €3; sent as five separate consignments, they attract €15.
• VAT is unchanged. You pay it from the first euro as before; the duty comes on top.
• EU sellers become more competitive. Especially for mixed baskets of low-value goods, where the per-item duty adds up quickly.

How to prepare

Before you check out, count the number of different product types in your basket and multiply by three: that is your extra duty, before any handling fee. If you later send goods back, duty and VAT are not refunded automatically, and you will need to claim them from your national customs authority. Our guide on returning goods to a foreign online store explains the process, and our breakdown of what shipping from the USA to Europe really costs shows how duty, VAT and clearance fees add up on a real order.

If you export goods from the EU to China rather than import them, this change does not affect you. Chinese import rules apply instead, summarised on our China country page.

Quick facts

EU De Minimis Ends: €3 Customs Duty per Item Since 1 July 2026

schedule Updated 10/09/2026

Summary

Since 1 July 2026 the EU no longer exempts low-value consignments of up to €150 from customs duty, ending the so-called de minimis relief for goods bought from outside the EU. Instead, a temporary flat customs duty of €3 per item applies to distance sales of imported goods in consignments up to €150, where an item is counted by tariff classification rather than quantity: five identical T-shirts attract €3, three T-shirts and a watch €6. The duty applies regardless of the VAT scheme used, including IOSS, and covers purchases from non-EU platforms such as Temu, Shein and AliExpress. Import VAT has applied from the first euro since 1 July 2021 and is unchanged. The Commission has proposed a separate Union handling fee to follow in autumn 2026, with the amount still to be set. The €3 duty is due to apply until 1 July 2028, after which normal customs duty rates by type of goods will apply to low-value consignments too.

€150 duty exemption

Abolished from 1 July 2026

Temporary flat duty

€3 per item in consignments up to €150 (distance sales)

What counts as an item

Goods under the same tariff classification, regardless of quantity

Import VAT

From the first euro since 1 July 2021 (unchanged)

Union handling fee

Proposed for autumn 2026, amount not yet set

Flat duty ends

1 July 2028, then normal duty rates by type of goods