Another €2 import levy on small packages from outside EU; Now €5 in total
Making small purchases from shops outside the European Union has just become more expensive. Since Sunday, November 1, an additional €2 levy applies per package valued at less than €150. This comes on top of the €3 levy implemented in July.
The EU is trying to curb the influx of cheap products being shipped into Europe, specifically from Asian retailers like SHEIN and Temu; hence the €3 import levy implemented in July.
The additional €2 added on November 1 is intended to cover the costs incurred by customs authorities for processing and inspecting the high volume of small shipments. According to Reuters, the extra charge could result in a total of €6 billion in revenue.
Last year, approximately 5.8 billion packages valued at less than €150 entered the EU. Over 90 percent of them originated from China. Customs is therefore pleased with this extra charge, director Nanette van Schelven told AD.
Customs hopes that online retailers like Temu and SHEIN will stop shipping individual items directly to consumers, and instead ship their items in bulk and process the individual orders here. “That way, we can inspect the container. If something fails to meet standards, we can immediately intercept the entire container - along with the thousands of substandard products inside,” Van Schelven said.
Retailers are already shifting their strategy. Customs has already noticed an uptick in containers. And PostNL reported a 32 percent decline in packages arriving from abroad in the third quarter, compared to a year earlier.
The extra levy will mean about €80 million extra per year for Dutch customs. “We are investing that in personnel and smarter oversight,” Van Schelven said. “We are hiring 350 to 500 staff members to monitor e-commerce. In addition, we aim to use AI to obtain better data; for instance, we are working on AI-based image recognition at the product level. We already employ this for detecting drugs in shipping containers, but not yet for individual goods."