One EU parcel charge is law. The other is still a proposal.

Adopted, and charged today

The €3.00 customs duty on low value consignments

A flat customs duty of €3.00 has applied to consignments with an intrinsic value at or under €150 since 1 July 2026, under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, Article 2. It stands in place of the percentage rate for the commodity code rather than being added to it, and the measure runs to 1 July 2028, and may be extended as appropriate.

It is counted per each different category of item, identified by its tariff sub-heading, not per parcel and not per product. The Council's own example is the clearest statement of that rule anywhere: a parcel of one silk blouse and two wool blouses holds 2 distinct items, because the two fabrics sit under different sub-headings, so €6.00 is due rather than €3.00.

It reaches goods whose non-EU seller is registered in the import one-stop shop, which the Council puts at 93% of all e-commerce flows into the EU, and the Commission will assess whether to extend the rate to sellers outside the IOSS. What ends it is not a date on its own: normal customs tariffs, once the EU customs data hub is operational, and the Council says that hub is expected in 2028. What it costs per parcel, priced line by line →

Proposed, and charged nowhere

The handling fee

A separate charge, usually called a handling fee, is under discussion in the customs reform package and the multiannual financial framework. It is a proposal. It has no adopted amount and no adopted start date, and until it has both there is nothing for an importer to pay and nothing for this site to add to a landed cost.

That is not this site reading between the lines. The Council states it in both of the releases that announced the duty above, in almost the same words each time:

The measure is distinct from the proposed so-called "handling fee" which is currently under discussion in the context of the customs reform package and the multiannual financial framework.

Council of the EU, "Customs: Council agrees to levy customs duty on small parcels as of 1 July 2026", press release of 12 December 2025

The measure is distinct from the proposed so-called "handling fee" currently under discussion in the context of the customs reform package.

Council of the EU, "Council gives final green light to new customs duty rules for small parcels", press release of 11 February 2026, updated 12 February 2026 to include the adopted legislative text

Amounts and start dates for it circulate widely in trade reporting. None of them is adopted law, so none of them appears on this page. When one is adopted, it will be published here with the instrument that adopted it, the same way every other figure on this site carries the source it came from.

What to re-check, and when

This page is about the EU parcel duty set against the proposed handling fee, and the measure behind it has an end this site records: EU EUR 3 low value consignment customs duty, which runs until 1 July 2028, on Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, Article 2; that date is held in the data layer rather than typed here, and the build fails on it rather than letting this page go on describing the measure as current.

The claims on this page about the EU parcel duty set against the proposed handling fee were last read on 2 September 2026, against the sources it names, and what to check first is the sentence under this one.

Two things move here and they move separately. The first is the proposal: an adopted amount or an adopted start date for the handling fee changes this page from a warning into a second set of figures, and nothing short of an adopted instrument does. The second is the duty's own end, 1 July 2028, which the Council describes as subject to extension and which is tied to the data hub rather than to the calendar. A build after that date fails until somebody re-reads both, which is deliberate.