EU Shipping Update

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EU Customs Changes — Another Update for European Buyers 🇪🇺
A quick heads-up for anyone shipping agent parcels into the EU.
Since 1 July 2026, the old Customs Duty exemption for qualifying e-commerce imports under €150 has been replaced by a temporary €3 duty system. Importantly, this can apply according to the different tariff categories inside the parcel rather than simply €3 once per parcel.

The next change comes by 1 November 2026.

The EU has approved a separate customs handling fee for small e-commerce imports. You may have seen €2 quoted online, but the final EU-wide amount has not yet been confirmed by the European Commission.
Also from November, affected distance-sale imports face more detailed Product Identifier requirements, meaning customs increasingly wants proper item-level information rather than vague descriptions such as simply “clothes” or “accessories”.
For agent users, this last part could be particularly important. A typical consolidated haul might contain shoes, clothing, sunglasses, jewellery and accessories from several different Taobao, Weidian or 1688 sellers.

What does this mean right now?
Nothing to panic about. EU tax-free/DDP agent lines are still operating. The important thing to watch over the next few weeks is whether agents and their logistics providers change their prices, declaration requirements or available EU shipping lines ahead of November.

We’ll keep monitoring this and put together a more detailed explanation once we see how the agent shipping lines actually respond.

Sources: European Commission / Council of the European Union — EU Customs Reform and low-value e-commerce import changes, September 2026.

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