The European Union will begin imposing this Sunday, November 1, a new management fee of 2 euros per item on products bought online outside the community territory. This new surcharge is added to the tariff of 3 euros in force since July for orders below 150 euros and is intended to strengthen customs controls in the face of the surge in shipments from platforms such as Shein and Temu.
The European Commission has set the amount of this fee within the framework of the customs reform approved in September. The payment will correspond to the entity that assumes the import costs, with the intention that it does not fall directly on the final buyer, and it will be mandatory in all Member States from next Sunday.
Unlike the levy introduced this summer, which eliminated the customs duty exemption from which low-value goods benefited, this new charge seeks to cover the costs faced by national authorities in processing and monitoring shipments. It includes everything from the verification of the data provided to risk analyses and physical inspections when they are necessary.
The decision is part of the strong rebound in e-commerce coming from third countries. According to figures from Brussels, in 2025 some 5.9 billion low-value items entered the community market, four times more than in 2022, and around 90% had origin in China.
This growth has increased the workload of customs services and has made it harder to identify products that violate European safety and consumer protection rules, in addition to fueling concerns over the competitive pressure suffered by companies based in the Union versus sellers from outside the bloc.
The new management fee will be independent of the temporary surcharge of 3 euros that has been applied since July 1 to items included in shipments whose value does not exceed 150 euros, after the EU eliminated the exemption that allowed these purchases to be brought in without paying tariff duties.
In this case, the amount is determined by product category and not by the complete package. Thus, a shipment with several items of the same customs classification may be subject to a single charge of 3 euros, while another that groups goods from different categories must pay that amount for each one of them.
This transitional regime will remain in place until July 2028, when the new European customs data platform for e-commerce is scheduled to begin operating. This tool will make it possible to replace the fixed surcharge with the ordinary tariffs corresponding to each type of goods.
Consumers are calling for more controls
The European Consumer Organisation has welcomed the implementation of this new fee, understanding that it will give customs more resources to locate dangerous or illegal products. However, it has warned that its impact will depend on Member States allocating the revenue raised to effectively strengthen inspections.
The entity has also expressed its concern at the possibility that some platforms may pass these costs on to users in the final steps of the purchasing process, a practice that, it recalls, would violate European regulations requiring the total price to be disclosed in advance.
"Now the priority must be to ensure that importers pay the fee, not consumers, and that Member States use it for the purpose for which it was conceived: to truly strengthen customs capacity and protect consumers," said the association's director general, Agustín Reyna.
More obligations for large platforms
The introduction of these surcharges is part of a broader reform with which the Union seeks to increase the responsibility of platforms and of sellers operating from third countries. These will come to be considered importers and will be required to ensure both compliance with customs obligations and with the EU rules applicable to their products.
In this way, companies such as Shein and Temu will have to provide the authorities with the necessary information about the articles they place on the European market, assume the corresponding payments and guarantee that the products comply with safety requirements and the rest of the EU legal requirements.
The regulation also provides for sanctions for repeat-offending companies that fail to comply with their obligations, with fines that in the most serious cases may reach 6% of the value of the goods imported the previous year. Also envisaged are the withdrawal of certain customs benefits and even restrictions on access to the platforms.
To improve supervision, the reform includes the creation of a European Customs Authority based in the French city of Lille, which will coordinate the actions of the member states and administer a common information system on imports and exports.
This platform will begin to be used for e-commerce in 2028 and will be progressively expanded to the rest of the business sector from 2031, with the goal of becoming in 2034 the mandatory single point of entry for customs data in the EU. With this, it is intended to simplify procedures and strengthen the detection of risky goods.