ਯੂਰਪੀਅਨ ਯੂਨੀਅਨ ਦੇ 91% ਘੱਟ-ਮੁੱਲ ਵਾਲੇ ਪਾਰਸਲ ਚੀਨ ਤੋਂ ਕਿਉਂ ਆਉਂਦੇ ਹਨ - ਅਤੇ ਹੁਣ ਕੀ ਬਦਲਦਾ ਹੈ
For 20 years a €150 box might have been brought into the European Union without a customs officer ever checking what was inside or how much it cost. It’s that unassuming convenience that saw around 4.6 billion low-value parcels land on doorsteps throughout the 27 member states in 2024 alone. More than 90 percent of them were sent from China. That free pass ended on July 1, 2026, and the ripple effects are already being felt in every part of cross-border e-commerce, from Shenzhen fulfilment centers to Warsaw living rooms.
The number itself, 91 percent, has been turned into a kind of shorthand in Brussels policy debates. It is quoted by the retail trade press, it is referred to in almost every customs briefing produced since late 2025, and it is cited by finance ministers. But one figure has a way of ironing out a much more nuanced story: why the concentration became so extreme, what the EU decided to do about it, and what the shift actually costs the businesses and customers on either end of the parcel.
The Scale of the Problem, in Numbers
Low value parcel volumes into the EU didn’t rise slowly. They were around double year-over-year heading into 2024, fuelled almost entirely by a handful of Chinese-founded platforms centred around direct factory-to-doorstep deliveries. Shein, Temu, AliExpress, and the newer Amazon Haul have built their price architecture around the €150 duty-free level, rather than seeing it as an incidental bonus.
| Origin market | 2023 volume (approx.) | 2024 volume (approx.) | Share of 2024 total |
| ਚੀਨ (ਮੇਨਲਡ) | 1.1 ਅਰਬ | 4.2 ਅਰਬ | 91% |
| Rest of world combined | 1.2 ਅਰਬ | 0.4 ਅਰਬ | 9% |
| Total sub-€150 parcels | 2.3 ਅਰਬ | 4.6 ਅਰਬ | 100% |
That split is striking not only for China’s share, but also for how swiftly the rest-of-world share decreased in relative terms, although its own volume was about flat. The exemption was designed to relieve customs authorities of the paperwork load of processing small personal presents and one-off purchases. It became a distribution channel for a small number of very big platforms, industrial in scale.
European Commission officials had been raising the alarm about the imbalance for years, but the political urgency changed when domestic merchants started pointing to closed shopfronts as proof of a structural rather than marginal competitive distortion. The tone among finance ministers when the emergency measure was accepted in December 2025 was summed up by Danish Economic Affairs Minister Stephanie Lose who described it as a hasty remedy needed as member states watched local shops shut under the weight of untaxed cheap cost imports.
Why China Ended Up With 91 Percent of the Volume
The concentration is partly geography, partly business model. located in the Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub of China, platforms are within one or two days of some of the world’s most efficient parcel-consolidation hubs, offering those located there an unrivalled combination of cheap unit production cost, dense factory networks and established express-air infrastructure into Europe.
It is a purposeful tactic as well. Chinese cross-border platforms have designed fulfilment methods that are especially constructed around the €150 threshold, ensuring that claimed parcel values are kept below the line, and that things are shipped individually rather than in bulk to a warehouse. Investigators at the European Commission have also detected widespread undervaluation, with parcels listed below their true value intentionally to avoid duty exposure, adding a compliance element to what was already a volume concern.
None of this would have been possible without the underlying air-cargo capacity developed over the previous decade particularly to service small-parcel e-commerce. Along with the platforms themselves, there grew up a layer of infrastructure – dedicated cargo charters, bonded logistics parks at major Chinese airports and software systems designed to auto-generate customs paperwork for millions of individual buyers – that is not easily replicated by exporters in other regions, even if they wanted to compete on the same terms.
Aggressive social-media marketing. Shopfronts customised by algorithm. Rock-bottom prices subsidised by scale. A flywheel other exporting nations just couldn’t compete with on cost or speed. By the time regulators intervened, China’s share of the sub-€150 parcel stream was, to put it simply, near-total dominance of the category.
There is also a network-density argument that gets less attention than it should. Cities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Yiwu created whole micro-industrial clusters around small-parcel production, sitting minutes from the express and air-freight terminals that ship such goods out of the country. In a market that does not have such density, a seller just pays more at each step, from sourcing to packaging to the first mile of transportation, and those extra costs compound rapidly as volume rises into the millions of packages a month.
How the EU Got From Debate to Regulation
The road to July 2026 was shorter than the EU’s usual customs reform timeline, mainly because the initial plan was not fast enough for member states facing domestic political pressure.
| ਮਿਤੀ | ਮੀਲ |
| ਫਰਵਰੀ 2025 | European Commission signals intent to scrap the €150 de minimis exemption as part of a wider customs reform package |
| ਅਗਸਤ 2025 | United States removes its own de minimis threshold for low-value imports, closing a comparable loophole |
| ਦਸੰਬਰ ਨੂੰ 12, 2025 | EU finance ministers agree an emergency flat customs duty of €3 per item type, to take effect ahead of the original 2028 timetable |
| ਫਰਵਰੀ 11, 2026 | Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 receives final legislative approval, formally abolishing the €150 exemption |
| ਜੁਲਾਈ 1, 2026 | The €3 per-item duty enters into force across all 27 member states; IOSS registration becomes effectively mandatory |
| 2026 ਦੇ ਅਖੀਰ (ਉਮੀਦ ਕੀਤੀ ਗਈ) | A further €2 per-consignment handling fee is under discussion, which would push the combined charge toward roughly €5 |
The initial revision is part of a wider package to modernise the EU’s customs union and set a target date of 2028 to eliminate the de minimis treatment. Ministers from countries with the most exposed retail sectors wanted something sooner and the compromise was a two-step process: an emergency flat duty starting mid-2026, followed by a more comprehensive customs data and enforcement system in subsequent years. Irish senator Barry Andrews, who had initially campaigned for a €5 per-package fee, praised the €3 deal but said member states should be ready to increase it if the influx of inexpensive parcels did not halt.
What the New Charges Actually Look Like
The €3 per-item-type duty
All parcels under €150 will henceforth be charged a flat rate customs duty of €3 under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382. The duty will be charged per unique product type, not per parcel, and will be based on its six-digit HS tariff code. In practice that distinction matters considerably. Ten pairs of identical cotton socks remain one item type and are charged at one €3. Five cotton pairs and five wool pairs of two sorts trigger €6 A shipment including a phone cover, charger and earbuds is being charged duty three times over at €9 on a parcel that a year ago would have cleared for free.
VAT was never the exemption
It’s worth separating two topics that are sometimes confused in casual conversation – VAT and customs duty. VAT has been collected on low-value imports thru the Import One-Stop Shop, or IOSS, system since 2021 and was never part of the de minimis exemption. What will change in 2026 is the layer of duty that sits over that VAT, and the administrative requirement for full customs declarations on every consignment irrespective of value.
National add-ons are already appearing
But as the €3 measure is a stopgap, not the final architecture, individual member states have begun piling their own taxes on top. Romania put a €5 charge on low-value packages ahead of the EU-wide policy, starting in January 2026. Brussels has also floated an additional €2 per-consignment handling fee, expected later in 2026, which would put a typical combined payment for a single-item-type parcel toward almost €5.
| Parcel example | Old landed cost (pre-Jul 2026) | New flat duty added | Approx. new landed cost |
| Single €20 phone case | €20 + VAT only | + €3 | €23 + ਵੈਟ |
| €50 order, one item type | €50 + VAT only | + €3 | €53 + ਵੈਟ |
| €50 order, three item types (e.g. shirt, socks, charger) | €50 + VAT only | + €9 | €59 + ਵੈਟ |
| €100 mixed order, four item types | €100 + VAT only | + €12 | €112 + VAT, before any national handling fee |
It affects the arithmetic rather fast for a vendor marketing thin-margin goods. If you place a €50 order containing three different sorts of things, the duty is now €9, before you even start calculating the VAT. VAT, in most member states, is based on the total value of products + duty. Multiply it by tens of thousands of monthly orders and the impact on a platform’s unit economics is not cosmetic, it’s structural.
A Familiar Playbook From Washington
This did not happen in a void. In August 2025, the U.S. removed its own $800 de minimis threshold on low-value imports, eliminating a loophole that had grown similarly dominated by Chinese direct-to-consumer platforms. EU officials have said that the American move confirmed their own fears and made the need for action greater because commodities diverted away from a tighter US market had a clear next stop in an EU that had yet to close its own equal gap.
There is another reason the parallel is relevant. Industry analysts tracking the US rollout have observed a consistent pattern when de minimis exemptions go away: individual parcel volumes decline, bulk and consolidated freight increases as sellers transition to holding inventory closer to the end customer, compliance workloads spike sharply, and domestic or regional fulfilment infrastructure expands to absorb the difference. Europe is currently likely to follow a similar pattern, a few months behind.
Who Gains and Who Absorbs the Cost
The immediate winners are European brick-and-mortar and online shops who already pay full tariffs on imported inventory, as the legislation closes a pricing gap they have complained about openly for years. Contract logistics businesses and warehouse operators across Europe will also be surprising winners. A spokesman for JLL in Shanghai has already said that recent changes in Europe mean that local ਵੇਅਰਹਾਊਸਿੰਗ is now far more appealing to Chinese merchants who had no need to keep inventory within the bloc before.
On the other side of the ledger, the platforms that were built with a cost structure totally dependent on duty-free direct from the factory shipping are in for the harshest adjustment. Shein and Temu, and the thousands of smaller vendors that list thru them, are looking at a pricing mechanism that no longer operates the same way it did on June 30, 2026. And ordinary EU consumers are not protected either. Research from ID Logistics Polska found that just over half of Polish shoppers were unaware the change was even coming and just a little over a quarter correctly understood it as a customs duty rather than a tax or VAT adjustment, suggesting a wave of order-time sticker shock is still ahead for many buyers across the bloc.
Small and mid-sized EU importers are in weird limbo. Many may be pleased to see the playing field levelled against offshore competitors, but they are not themselves free from the increased paperwork burden. This means that, for a boutique retailer ordering sample runs or small batches directly from a Chinese manufacturer, the same per-item duty and declaration costs are incurred as a giant platform shipping millions of parcels. The compliance cost hits harder on smaller operators without in-house customs teams.
How Sellers and Platforms Are Adjusting Their Logistics
The practical approach emerging across the industry has three constant strands: consolidate, localise and get compliance correct before the goods ever leave China. Sellers that used to ship individual items one by one are progressively shifting to bulk ocean and ਹਵਾਈ ਭਾੜੇ into warehouses in the EU, before fulfilling last-mile orders locally, avoiding recurrent exposure to duty on a per-item basis and shrinking the delivery window at the same time. Correct HS codes and declared values upfront are also now a must, because the EU’s new Customs Data Hub does real-time automatic verification and mismatches now mean holds, delays and penalties rather than a silent pass-through.
That is precisely the operational gap that a logistics partner with deep China-origin experience is designed to bridge. Topway Shipping, established in Shenzhen in 2010, has more than 10 years of expertise in shipping goods from China with a founding team that has more than 15 years of experience in international logistics and customs clearing. While the corporation is based in China-U.S. lanes. The same end-to-end approach that includes first-leg transportation, offshore warehousing, customs clearance and last-mile delivery is precisely the framework sellers now need to traverse the EU’s post-de-minimis environment. Brands can also send inventory via consolidated full container load or less-than-container-load ocean freight, rather than shipping thousands of individual duty-exposed parcels, and store it in overseas warehousing closer to European buyers. The new EU rules now require customs clearance paperwork to be filed for every consignment, but by working with one partner, that’s one less thing to worry about. For sellers that spent the past few years optimising for a duty-free world, that kind of warehouse-anchored, integrated supply chain is rapidly becoming the only model that still maintains margin.
More broadly, goods forwarders are seeing a change in the queries clients ask. Instead of focusing on how quickly an item can land in a customer’s mailbox, sellers are now asking how to batch shipments, how to pre-clear goods before they reach the border and how to keep HS classification consistent across an entire catalogue so audits do not stall an entire container over one mislabeled item type.
There is also a timing factor that smaller vendors tend to under-estimate. Even consolidated LCL ocean freight works to a slower schedule than the express packages many platforms made their names on, meaning inventory planning must move several weeks earlier in the cycle. sellers who wait for a product to be trending before placing a bulk order into overseas warehousing will be perpetually behind demand while those who forecast further out and stage inventory ahead of time can still offer near-domestic delivery speeds once goods are sitting in an EU warehouse rather than in transit from a Chinese factory.
What This Means Beyond the EU
The UK is watching closely, already working thru its own version of the same debate, with online sales at about 27.9 percent of total retail as of March 2026, a level that has remained elevated throughout the transition period and kept pressure on regulators to address the same low-value import question domestically. Chinese platforms and the goods forwarders serving them are approaching the EU change as a preview rather than an isolated incident, as a similar move by London would further squeeze the remaining duty-free channels.
But none of this will do much to curb demand for Chinese-made items among European customers, and it would be a mistake to read the legislation that way. That a few more euros in tariff per item is no deterrent when price sensitivity and product diversity, not to mention the enormous breadth of China’s manufacturing base, remain major draws. What changes is the process by which those goods reach the client. Weight shifts away from millions of individually cleared parcels and toward fewer, bulkier, pre-cleared shipments that pass thru warehouses rather than mailrooms.
On a wider structural point, the seamless duty-free tiny package that defined the last decade of cross-border ecommerce boom is closing on both sides of the Atlantic, and probably soon on both sides of the Channel too. What replaces it looks less like millions of individually tracked envelopes and more like the typical wholesale supply chain: containers, bonded warehouses, and inventory forward-positioned, simply reconstructed around a direct-to-consumer sales model instead of a traditional retail one.
For logistics firms with an established China-origin network, that move is more of a return to a familiar business than a danger. The fundamentals of traditional freight forwarding are moving full containers, clearing customs correctly the first time and running warehouses close to end markets. Companies built on that foundation, including firms like Topway Shipping with over a decade of first-leg transportation, overseas warehousing and customs clearance experience, are positioned to absorb the volume that direct-parcel platforms can no longer move as cheaply on their own.
ਸਿੱਟਾ
The 91 percent percentage was never truly about China itself. It was a hint that a loophole for occasional personal shipments had been stealthily turned into the backbone of an entire industry. The EU’s answer—temporary €3-per-item tariffs from July 1, 2026, with more tariffs and a permanent framework still being built—closes that gap, but doesn’t stop cross-border trade with China, it reshapes how that trade has to go. Consolidation, foreign warehousing and proper customs compliance are no longer optimisations, they are the entry ticket. Those sellers and platforms that change their logistics today, with partners experienced in China-origin customs clearance and full-chain fulfilment, will be the ones standing once the dust of this shift settles.
ਸਵਾਲ
Q: Why does China account for 91% of the EU’s low-value parcels?
A: China’s manufacturing base, robust express transportation infrastructure and platforms like Shein, Temu and AliExpress, whose pricing models were developed expressly around the previous €150 duty-free threshold, converged to make it the overwhelming source of sub-€150 imports into the EU.
Q: When did the EU’s de minimis exemption actually end?
A: On July 1st 2026 the duty-free allowance of €150 was abolished under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 which was definitively adopted by the Council of the EU in February 2026.
Q: How much does the new EU parcel duty cost?
A: Customs duty is now charged at a flat €3 per distinct item type per shipment, depending on its six-digit HS code, rather than on a per-parcel basis. There have also been discussions about introducing a second handling cost of around €2 at a later stage, and some Member States, such as Romania, have put their own national levies on top.
Q: Does this change replace VAT on low-value imports?
A: No. VAT has been collected on low value imports since 2021 via the IOSS system and still applies. The 2026 change does not replace VAT but adds an additional layer of customs duty on it.
Q: How can sellers reduce the impact of the new duty structure?
A: We consolidate and transport in bulk ocean or air freight, inventory in overseas warehousing within the EU, and ensure HS code classification is correct before the goods leave China, to prevent repeated per-item duty exposure.
