Xitoydan Fransiyaga jo'natish: Sotuvchilar De-Minimisdan keyin nimani bilishlari kerak
For years, exporting low-value goods from China to France was surprisingly simple. A package under €150 passed customs without duty and VAT was collected via IOSS or on delivery and vendors constructed pricing models around that predictable baseline. That time has passed. In the span of four months, between March and July 2026, France and the European Union revised the regulations for cross-border e-commerce twice. And the changes are permanent in direction, even where particular levies are transitory.
In this article we’ll walk you through what actually happened, what it costs in practice and what vendors shipping from China to France need to adjust in their pricing, documentation and logistical setup to be compliant and competitive.
It also depends who’s involved. This isn’t a change just for marketplaces shipping bulk containers. It hits every dropshipping shopfront seller headquartered in Shenzhen or Yiwu, every brand that is fulfilling French orders from an overseas warehouse in Germany or the Netherlands, and every agency that is managing logistics for numerous China-based clients. It is also the size of the shift that has led French and EU authorities to act twice in a single year and the reason why sellers ignoring the new mechanics will likely see it show up first as unexplained margin erosion, then as delivery delays, once customs officials start flagging inconsistent declarations.
The End of the €150 De-Minimis Exemption: What Actually Changed
The EU’s de-minimis exemption let products with a value of €150 or less to enter the bloc free of customs charge, however import VAT was never exempt beyond €22 from 2021. That duty-free treatment lapsed on 1 July 2026. The European Commission’s stated motive, reiterated in Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, was simple: low-value packages from outside the EU had reached an enormous scale, more than six billion items anticipated for 2025 alone, and regulators concluded this was creating unfair competition for EU-based sellers and taxing product-safety oversight.
The former exemption has been replaced by a temporary flat customs charge of €3 per item category on qualified business-to-consumer shipments with a value of €150 or less. Important is that this charge is not determined as a proportion of value, as is the case with ordinary customs duty. It is charged per HS-code line in the customs declaration, so that a single parcel with articles that fall under several distinct tariff subheadings could result in numerous €3 charges.
First came France. On 1 March 2026, French customs authorities implemented their own national Small Parcel Tax under Article 82 of the 2026 Finance Act, charging €2 per article category for shipments coming from outside the EU with a value of less than €150. It was deliberately presented as a short-term solution to manage the influx of cheap products pouring in on platforms that are buying substantially from China until they can find a harmonised EU-wide solution. The EU’s own €3 flat tariff came into force on 1 July 2026, but French authorities delayed their national tax on the same day, stating they did not want to add a €2 national charge to a €3 European one, which would have meant a total of €5 per category.
Timeline: From France’s National Tax to the EU-Wide Duty
These modifications came out in overlapping phases, so it’s easy to lose track of which charge applies when. The chart below summarises the sequence that sellers and logistical teams need to maintain straight.
| Milestone | Ijroga Kirish muddati | What It Means for a China-to-France Shipment |
| EU €150 duty-free threshold | In force until 30 June 2026 | Parcels valued at €150 or less entered France without customs duty; import VAT still applied. |
| France’s national Small Parcel Tax | 1 March 2026 – 30 June 2026 | A flat €2 charge per HS-code category on consignments up to €150, collected mainly through La Poste or the IOSS filer. |
| EU-wide temporary flat duty | 2026-yil 1-iyuldan | A flat €3 customs duty per HS-code category applies EU-wide, replacing France’s national €2 tax to avoid double charging. |
| Yevropa Ittifoqining ishlov berish to'lovi | Expected by 1 November 2026 | An additional per-item processing fee, still being finalized, layered on top of the €3 duty. |
| Full EU Customs Reform | Targeted for 1 July 2028 | Flat fees are phased out; ordinary product-specific duty rates based on HS classification and origin apply to all shipments regardless of value. |
One detail worth underlining: the €3 duty is stated as transitory, running until July 1, 2028. After that date, the EU’s wider Customs Reform is due to scrap flat fees altogether and apply standard, product-specific duty rates to every import irrespective of stated value, using a tariff schedule that spans over 13,000 lines. This means the current flat-rate phase is not the end of the road. It’s a transition, and sellers who adopt compliance habits today will be in a far better position when full duty assessment hits.”
It is also worth remembering that France was not acting alone or on its own authority. Italy and Romania already imposed their own national handling fees on low-value imports in January 2026, even before the general EU deadline, and the trend is not confined to Europe. The United States phased out its $800 de minimis exception through 2025, first for China-origin goods and later globally, while Japan has been revising its own policy. Against that backdrop, France’s approach looks less like an isolated tax grab and more like one government moving in sync with a greater global tendency toward treating every parcel, regardless of value, as a formal customs entry.
What the New Costs Look Like in Practice
Description makes this abstract, numbers make it concrete sooner. Take three hypothetical parcels a China-based merchant may send into France under the laws in force since July 2026 and compare what they would have cost under the former de-minimis regime.
| Stsenariy | Under Old De-Minimis (pre-July 2026) | Under Current Rules (post-July 2026) |
| Single €40 phone case, one HS code | €0 duty, VAT only | €3 flat duty + VAT, plus handling fee once live |
| €90 order with 3 different HS codes (e.g. apparel + accessory + electronics) | €0 duty, VAT only | €9 flat duty (3 × €3) + VAT, plus handling fee once live |
| €140 mixed carton, 5 HS codes | €0 duty, VAT only | €15 flat duty (5 × €3) + VAT, plus handling fee once live |
All three scenarios are subject to this. The more HS codes you stuff into one shipment, the larger the flat-duty bill becomes, irrespective of the real worth of the products. Now, if a seller is combining five accessory lines into one parcel to economise on shipping, he may be paying more in duty than a competitor who ships the same value in a box of a single category. It’s a real new variable in the landed-cost maths and it rewards sellers who are thinking about their packing lists with HS categorisation in mind, not just carton space.
A Quick Word on VAT, Since It Is Easy to Confuse With Duty
Sellers new to the France market sometimes assume that the duty changes also touched VAT laws, and they didn’t. Since the €22 VAT exemption was eliminated in July 2021, all shipments, no matter what their value, are subject to import VAT on goods entering the EU. The 2026 revisions are all about customs duty, which is a distinct fee on top of VAT, not a substitute for it. For a French customer it implies an order that previously carried VAT alone now bears VAT plus the flat charge, and, whenever it launches, the Union Handling Fee. Listing these three charges separately on internal price sheets guards against a frequent and costly error of believing the new levy substitutes existing VAT requirements.
HS Codes, IOSS, and Documentation Now Matter More Than Ever
Every low-value shipment now requires an item-level customs declaration, and that item-level declaration is dependent upon precise HS classification. In the past, a seller might take the convenience of applying a single catch-all tariff code to a mixed batch of tiny goods, but today that shortcut carries a direct economic consequence: each new code comes with its own €3 charge. Getting classification right the first time is no longer a compliance nicety. It’s a pricing decision.
These improvements have not removed IOSS registration, which remains the simplest method of collecting VAT at point of sale. What has changed is that IOSS does not protect a shipment from the flat duty anymore. Sellers with IOSS must still make a separate duty declaration. Non-IOSS goods must be cleared independently in the member state of destination, rather than being centrally cleared and routed. That distinction has implications for routing: a fulfilling partner that consolidates clearance in one hub and trucks parcels further across borders may not be able to continue doing that for non-IOSS France-bound parcels without changing its procedure.
Another area where the margin for error is shrinking is the accuracy of the invoice. Vague product descriptions, rounded reported values or the absence of country-of-origin data raise the danger of delays at the French border. And delays translate directly into disgruntled consumers and greater return rates for e-commerce vendors that compete partially on delivery speed.
Rethinking Pricing and Fulfilment Strategy
The maths has moved enough that merchants with small margins on low-ticket items need to do a thorough pricing assessment, not just quietly eat the higher cost. Some practical levers worth investigating are to integrate the flat duty into landed cost calculations at the SKU level, rather than average across the catalogue. Single-category orders are now considerably cheaper to fulfil than multi-category ones. Where product design permits, bundling products with a common HS code can help decrease the number of duty lines triggered each order.
There is a routing issue as well. “Some sellers are beginning to ask if the calculus has changed to consolidate shipments to bonded or offshore warehouses within the EU and then fulfil domestically from there. B2B replenishment shipments and B2C parcels are treated slightly differently under the reform. That technique requires a bigger upfront freight investment, but offers more predictable last mile prices and faster delivery, which can be worth it for sellers with steady, forecastable demand in the French marketplace.
Delivery experience is the easiest aspect of this equation to miss until consumers start complaining. With the old exemption most French customers never paid a customs duty at all, so any new fee that appears at the door creates tension, even a minor one. Sellers who quietly absorb the flat duty and continue to price all-inclusive at checkout tend to have fewer abandoned deliveries and refused parcels than those who let the courier collect payment on arrival. Opting for a Delivered Duty Paid model, where duty and VAT are paid before the delivery even gets to French customs, takes a bit longer to get off the ground but tends to pay for itself in fewer unsuccessful deliveries and support tickets.
Choosing a Logistics Partner That Understands the New Rules
This is precisely the circumstance when the selection of a goods forwarder and customs partner moves from being a back-office detail and into impacting the bottom line immediately. A partner still processing declarations the old method, with broad or inconsistent HS coding, will silently increase duty exposure on every shipment. The seller has a genuine cost advantage over competitors not paying attention from a partner that keeps up with rule updates, files clean item-level declarations, and can advise on IOSS vs non-IOSS routing.
Topway Shipping has been in this business since 2010, with its headquarter based in Shenzhen and a founding team with more than 15 years of expertise in international logistics and customs clearing. The corporation has its roots in China-U.S. transportation, but its service model, including first-leg transportation, foreign omborxona, customs clearance and last-mile delivery, is directly applicable to the compliance issues that France’s new customs environment presently confronts. Topway Shipping provides flexible full container load and less than container load ocean freight from China to major ports around the world, giving growing sellers a practical middle ground between parcel exposure to per-category duties and a full dedicated supply chain, in the event of deciding whether to continue shipping parcel by parcel or move toward consolidated freight.
Instead, sellers should work with a forwarder that already has these workflows in place, so they don’t have to rebuild their own compliance process from scratch every time European regulations change again, which is a realistic possibility before the 2028 reform even arrives, given the rapid pace of change since March 2026.
A logistics partner that actually adds value, versus one that simply delivers boxes, is a partner that provides visibility in to the entire chain and not just the ocean or air leg. When a shipment leaves a factory in Shenzhen, it typically goes through export customs, an international carrier, French import customs and then a domestic last-mile network to reach a buyer’s door, and a break in communication at any of those handoffs is where declarations go stale, HS codes get mismatched or duty gets miscalculated. That’s precisely the gap Topway Shipping’s model is designed to close, with its ownership of first-leg transportation, overseas warehousing, customs clearance and last-mile delivery under one coordinated service, since the same team that classifies the goods at origin is accountable for how that classification holds up when the parcel actually lands in France.
If you are a seller still wondering about delivering parcel by parcel via express couriers or moving to bulk ocean freight into a warehouse headquartered in the EU, that decision now has a duty dimension it did not have before. With increasing volumes, ocean freight consolidated as a B2B import and then broken down for domestic French fulfilment does not have the same per-parcel flat tariff structure as direct-to-consumer tiny packages, which is one reason more sellers are re-examining their FCL and LCL alternatives. That makes the comparison far easier than juggling several providers for each, with one provider that can quote the parcel-level and container-level paths side by side.
Common Missteps Sellers Are Still Making
Some blunders keep coming back a few months into the new regime. The most common is to treat the flat duty as a per parcel fee, not a per category tax. This means merchants are underpricing multi category orders, then absorbing an unanticipated expense at the point of clearance. Second, and a close second, is the continued use of generic or outdated HS codes inherited from years-old product listings that were bearable under the former exemption, but now translate directly into either overpayment or worse, flagged shipments awaiting manual review.
A third, more subtle, issue is simply not conveying the change to clients at all. purchasers who ordered under the previous fee structure and notice an inexplicable additional charge on a repeat purchase are more likely to call support or leave a negative review than purchasers who were advised ahead of time (even if only briefly) that import fees to France had changed. A short queue at the checkout stating the price includes any applicable EU duty and VAT does more to safeguard conversion rates than most sellers assume.
Looking Ahead to the 2028 Customs Reform
The €3 flat duty is treated as the final state by mistake. The EU has made clear that this is an interim solution while a new EU Customs Authority is built out in a fully digitalised customs system. Another layer of per-item costs is the anticipated Union Handling Fee, expected by November 2026. The sellers who see compliance as a continuous process, rather than a one-time tick-box exercise, will be the ones who make the smoothest transition when flat fees are replaced by product-specific duty rates in 2028.
The trend is well prefigured by France’s experience during the last several months: a national tax established in March, stopped four months later as the EU-wide measure caught up, with another fee already queuing up behind. The practical lesson for sellers is to embed flexibility into price and fulfilment now, rather than waiting for each new rule to go into force before reacting.
Xulosa
The EU’s decision to scrap the de-minimis exception is a real game-changer for China-to-France e-commerce. What was to be a simple, duty-free path for low-value commodities has become an item level declaration, flat duties on a per-category basis, and a fee system that is still being worked out. This doesn’t make the France market unworkable, but it does reward sellers who properly classify products, price with landed cost in mind, and work with logistics partners that are equipped to handle the new declaration requirements. Sellers who see this as a one-and-done tweak, not the first of many that will continue through 2028, risk being caught flat-footed again.
And the winners among the sellers over the next two years will likely not be those who found a clever workaround. They will be the ones who rewired their pricing, packing and paperwork routines around the new mechanics early on, and who chose logistics partners who could pivot when the rules change between now and the full 2028 reform.
tez so'raladigan savollar
Q: Does the €150 de-minimis exemption still exist for shipments from China to France?
A: No. As of 1 July 2026, shipments valued at €150 or less were no longer duty-free. Instead, a flat, temporary customs duty of €3 per HS-code category applies today, and import VAT is charged as it has been since 2021.
Q: Is France’s €2 Small Parcel Tax still charged alongside the new EU duty?
A: No. To prevent charging both on the same cargo, France brought up its national €2 tax to coincide with the EU-wide €3 flat tariff on 1 July 2026.
Q: How is the new €3 duty calculated if a parcel contains several products?
A: It is charged for each HS-code category in the shipment, not for each item or the amount of the box. If a parcel contains products of three distinct tariff classifications, it will be taxed three times irrespective of the total price of the goods.
Q: Does using IOSS avoid the new customs duty?
A: No . IOSS makes paying VAT at checkout easy, but it doesn’t free a cargo from the flat customs fee, which is separate from VAT.
Q: What happens after the temporary flat duty period ends?
A: The flat-rate charges are likely to remain in place until 1 July 2028, when the larger Customs Reform of the EU is slated to be introduced, wherein regular, product-specific tax rates will be applied according to each item’s HS classification and country of origin.
