01 · The change
What actually changed, and when
For years, goods entering the EU worth under €150 were exempt from customs duty. That exemption is what made per-parcel dropshipping from China economically possible: a €12 product landed with no duty and almost no paperwork.
EU member states agreed to remove that relief. The phase-out began 1 July 2026. In its place:
- A €3 flat-rate duty applies, charged per item type by tariff classification (HS code) and origin, not once per parcel. A parcel holding three different products can trigger it three times.
- Several member states add their own handling fee per parcel on top, and the amounts differ by country. Reported examples include roughly €5 in Romania, and €2 in France and Italy.
- The €3 flat rate is temporary. It is expected to run until around 1 July 2028, when normal product-specific tariffs replace it under the EU Customs Data Hub. Your actual duty after that could be higher or lower than €3 depending on what you sell.
The 2028 cliff nobody is planning for
The €3 is a placeholder, not a settled rate. When the EU Customs Data Hub comes online around July 2028, normal product-specific tariffs are expected to replace it. Depending on your tariff code that could be considerably more than €3, or less. If you are modelling a product's economics past 2028, do not assume €3 holds.
The stated reason is competitive fairness. Bulk importers pay duty; per-parcel importers were not. The reform closes that gap, and the flat €3 is a stopgap until the tariff system can price every parcel properly.
Read this before you act on any of it
This page explains a cost change so you can model it. It is not customs advice, and the detail here moves. Confirm the current rates, dates and how they apply to your specific goods with a customs broker or your accountant before you reprice anything or change your import route.
The part most sellers miss
The charge is per item type, not per shipment and not per euro of value. That single detail decides everything that follows. One parcel carrying one product is one charge. A pallet carrying five different products is five charges, no matter how many units of each are on it.
The charge scales with how many separate customs entries you generate, not with how much you import. That is the whole story.
02 · The arithmetic
What it costs you, per order
Here are the two import routes side by side on the same volume. Move the sliders to your own numbers.
Per parcel from China: every order crosses the border on its own, so every order is its own line item and takes the full charge. Bulk into an EU warehouse: you import a restock shipment, pay the charge once per product line on that shipment, and then every order ships domestically inside the EU with no customs event at all.
Customs charges per month
Flat per-item-type charges only. Duty and VAT on the goods, and national per-parcel handling fees, apply on top.
Drag the slider to €5 to see where this sits if a national handling fee lands on top of the €3, or once tariffs replace the flat rate in 2028. On the per-parcel route the number moves with your order count, which means the more you scale, the more it costs you. On the bulk route it barely moves at all, because you are not generating a new declaration every time somebody buys something.
03 · The fix
Why holding stock inside the EU changes the arithmetic
This is not a clever workaround. It is just what the rule rewards. Customs charges attach to border crossings, so the fewer border crossings your orders make, the less you pay.
Import 2,000 units of five products into a Romanian warehouse in one shipment and you generate five line items. Sell those 2,000 units over the next two months and every one of those orders moves inside the EU, from a shelf in Romania to a door in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia or Slovenia. No customs event, no declaration, no flat charge.
What it does not change
Be clear about the limits, because plenty of people will oversell this:
- Duty and VAT on the goods still apply. Bulk import does not make your products duty free. It removes the flat per-line-item charges from your per-order cost, not the tax on the value of what you bought.
- You need capital up front. Buying 2,000 units is a real cash commitment, and it is the reason per-parcel dropshipping was attractive in the first place.
- You carry inventory risk. If the product stops selling, the stock is yours. Test before you commit, which is exactly what a small first batch is for.
Warehousing and storage are free on our network in every hub, so at least the stock sitting on the shelf does not add a monthly cost while you sell through it. The full rate card is on the fees page.
04 · The knock-on
What this does to your pricing
If you stay on the per-parcel route, the charge lands on every order, so it behaves exactly like a shipping cost increase. At €3 it is survivable on a €39 product and painful on a €15 one. Add a national handling fee and the cheap end of the market stops working.
Three things follow from that:
- Low-ticket products get squeezed first. A €5 charge on a €15 sale is a third of your gross margin before you have paid for anything else. The market will drift upward in price.
- Bundling starts to make sense, but only of the same product. Two units of one product in a parcel is still one item type. Two different products in the same parcel triggers the charge twice. A two-pack absorbs the cost; a mixed bundle does not.
- Your competitors have the same problem. Everyone selling into the EU from outside it is absorbing this. Raising price by a euro or two is not a competitive disadvantage when the whole market is doing it. Panicking and eating the cost is.
The COD Europe guide has a full profit calculator if you want to re-run your unit economics with the new line added.
05 · The other half
The compliance that arrived alongside it
The customs change did not come on its own, and the rest of it points in the same direction.
GPSR. The General Product Safety Regulation applies to almost all non-food consumer products sold in the EU. If you ship from outside the EU, you are expected to have an EU Authorised Representative: a named person or entity inside the union who is responsible for your product's compliance paperwork. No representative, no compliant sale.
Marketplace liability. The 2026 customs overhaul also made marketplaces directly liable for the compliance of what they list. That pressure gets passed straight down to sellers, which is why compliance requests from platforms have got sharper this year.
Both of these are easier to satisfy when your goods are already sitting inside the EU with an EU entity handling them, which is the same conclusion the customs arithmetic reaches by a different road.
Worth saying plainly
Compliance is genuinely a specialist area. An EU Authorised Representative is a defined legal role, not a box you tick. If you are selling into the EU from outside it, this is worth an hour with somebody who does it professionally rather than an afternoon of forum posts.
06 · The playbook
What to do about it now
Work out what it is actually costing you
Take last month's order count and multiply by €3, then by €5. That is the range you are absorbing depending on which countries you ship into. Most sellers have not done this arithmetic yet and are surprised by the size of it.
Check your margin at €5, not at €3
Model the worst case, not the best. If a product only works at exactly €3 with no national handling fee anywhere, it does not really work, and it will not survive tariffs replacing the flat rate in 2028.
Move your proven products into a European warehouse first
Not everything at once. Take the one or two products that already sell reliably, buy a batch, and land it in the region you sell into. Those are the ones where inventory risk is lowest and the customs saving is largest.
Keep testing new products the cheap way
Per-parcel still has a place for validation. Absorbing €3 to €5 on fifty test orders is a reasonable research cost. Absorbing it on five thousand is not a business.
Sort the compliance side while you are at it
If you are going to hold stock in the EU anyway, deal with GPSR and your authorised representative in the same pass rather than waiting for a platform to force it.
If you want the bulk route priced out, tell us what you are importing and we will quote the factory price, the freight and the duties as one number. That is what the sourcing request form is for, and it usually comes back within 24 hours.
07 · FAQ
Questions people ask
The phase-out of the €150 customs duty relief threshold began on 1 July 2026, replaced by a flat €3 duty per item type. That flat rate is temporary and is expected to run until around 1 July 2028, when normal tariffs take over under the EU Customs Data Hub. Several countries also charge their own per-parcel handling fee. Implementation is phased and details shift, so confirm the position for your goods with a customs broker.
One distinct product type, identified by its tariff code and origin. A parcel containing one product is charged once no matter how many units are in it. A shipment containing five different products is charged five times. This is why the charge punishes per-parcel importing so heavily and barely touches bulk importing.
No, and be careful of anyone who tells you otherwise. Duty and VAT on the value of the goods apply either way. What bulk importing removes is the flat per-line-item charge from your per-order cost, because your orders no longer cross a border individually. That is a real saving, but it is a different thing from being tax free.
If you are selling non-food consumer products into the EU from outside it, GPSR expects you to have one. It is a defined legal role covering responsibility for your product's compliance documentation. Treat it as a question for a compliance specialist rather than something to improvise.
Yes, but the per-parcel version of it is much weaker than it was. The model that holds up is the one that already looked better before this change: stock held inside the EU, orders confirmed by phone, delivery in 24 to 48 hours. This reform just widened the gap between that and shipping one parcel at a time from China.
At that volume the per-parcel charge is roughly €150 to €250 a month, which is annoying but not fatal. Stay per-parcel while you are still finding a product that works, and move to bulk once something proves itself. The break-even arrives faster than most people expect: run the calculator above with your own numbers.
Yes. Tell us what you want to bring in through the sourcing request form and we quote the factory price, the freight and the duties as a single DDP number into the warehouse. From there your orders ship domestically, get confirmed by our call centre, and the cash comes back to you weekly.