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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 online retailers such as Temu and Shein.
Trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told the European parliament he had proposed a handling fee on Tuesday to deal with the challenges of 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 will apply to direct sales but that items sent to warehouses will be taxed at €0.50.
Some of the resulting revenues would cover the cost of extra customs checks, while the remaining money will be directed to the EU budget. More than 9 in 10 packages come from China.
It follows similar moves by the US to crack down on such low-cost imports by ending its “de minimis” regime, which exempts shipments below $800 from tariffs and paperwork.
Donald Trump’s first attempt to crack down on parcels in February failed after US authorities said they did not have the resources to check them all.
He removed “de minimis” again on May 2, while also lowering tariffs that had been previously raised up to 120 per cent to force trade talks with China. The current set-up makes buying low-cost items 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”.
There has been an increase in the number of dangerous and non-compliant goods on the EU market and 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.”
More than 1bn packages arrived in both the Netherlands and Belgium, the EU’s main logistics hubs, last year, according to figures obtained by the Financial Times.
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. 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 have not responded to requests for comment.
Member states are expected to add the fee to an overhaul of customs rules, tightening controls and improving 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