The EU's €3 Parcel Duty: What It Means for Clothing Brands

Until 30 June 2026, a T-shirt posted from outside the EU to a shopper in Berlin or Lyon paid no customs duty if the parcel was worth €150 or less. Import VAT was due, but the duty itself was waived. That waiver is gone. Since 1 July 2026 the EU charges a flat €3 customs duty per item on those parcels, and a separate €2 handling fee is expected to follow from 1 November 2026. If your brand sells to EU customers and posts the orders from the UK, the US or anywhere else outside the EU, both land on every order. This guide explains how they are counted, who pays, who is not affected, and what you can do about it. Every rule was checked on 22 October 2026 against the European Commission sources listed at the end.

The short version

• €3 per item on goods sold to EU consumers and sent from outside the EU in a consignment worth up to €150, from 1 July 2026 until 1 July 2028.
• An item is not a garment. It is goods sharing the same tariff classification and description, so five identical T-shirts are one item and pay €3 between them.
• A €2 handling fee per item is expected from 1 November 2026. It applies to distance sales of any value, it is not temporary, and VAT is due on it.
• Product identifiers become compulsory for these parcels from 1 November 2026: the code your shop uses for the product and the manufacturer's code.
• Bulk shipments are not caught. Stock imported into an EU warehouse and sold from there follows the normal rules, which for clothing made in Bangladesh means 0% duty.

What changed on 1 July 2026

Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 of 11 February 2026 deleted the old relief for consignments of negligible value, goods worth up to €150 in total, from the EU's Duty Relief Regulation. In its place it put a temporary customs duty of €3 per item in a consignment worth up to €150, applying from 1 July 2026 until 1 July 2028. The Commission announced it under the heading "Ensuring fairness and safety". The rules on import VAT for these parcels, including the Import One Stop Shop (IOSS), are unchanged; the €3 sits on top.

The duty covers distance sales: goods that are outside the EU when they are sold, and are sent by or on behalf of the seller to a consumer in the EU. The Commission's guidance for member states and trade (version of 5 October 2026) says the intention is for it to apply whichever VAT scheme is used. Every parcel declared under IOSS pays it.

How the €3 is counted

The duty is charged per item, and the new Union Customs Code defines an item as goods in a consignment sharing the same tariff classification, description and, where it is declared, origin. In practice, the guidance says, the €3 applies per declaration line, whatever the quantity on that line. Two shirts and twenty shirts of the same kind cost the same €3.

One detail can change the count. Carriers declare low-value parcels on simplified declarations that use 6-digit codes, while a full declaration uses 10 digits. In the Commission's worked example, three women's knit suits of different fibres make one item on the simplified declaration and three on the full one. Ask your carrier which declaration it files for you.

Who pays, and why splitting parcels does not help

The person who lodges the customs declaration owes the duty. The guidance names the seller or the importer, for example the business holding the IOSS number, and says the consumer is the declarant only in very residual cases. In practice your carrier or IOSS intermediary will bill it to you, and you decide whether to pass it on at checkout.

The €150 limit is measured on the intrinsic value: the price of the goods themselves, without transport and insurance when those are shown separately on the invoice. Splitting an order into several parcels does not save anything, because each consignment pays its own €3 per item. Orders from two different customers are always two consignments. And customs may treat a bulk shipment made up of individually addressed or labelled orders as the separate distance sales it really is.

From 1 November 2026: a €2 fee and product codes

The new Union Customs Code, in force since 20 September 2026, creates a Union handling fee for customs processing of goods sold in distance sales. The October guidance fixes it at €2 per item, counted the same way as the duty, and expects it to apply from 1 November 2026; the Commission act that sets the amount was still under scrutiny when the guidance was published. Unlike the €3, the fee applies to distance sales of any value, including parcels above €150. It is permanent, it is not refunded if the goods come back, and VAT is charged on it.

The same date brings product identifiers. For each item in a distance sale worth up to €150, customs must be given the merchant product identifier, the code your shop or marketplace uses for the product, and the manufacturer's product identifier, plus a standardised one such as an EAN barcode number where one exists. For a garment sold under your own label, the manufacturer in this sense is normally your brand. The codes must identify the product model, one per style, colour and size, not a batch or a single unit. Business-to-business shipments are not covered. Your shop's SKUs probably already do the job; make sure your carrier receives them.

Who is not affected

None of this applies to stock bought for resale. If your brand imports a bulk order into its own EU warehouse, that is not a distance sale. The goods are cleared under the normal rules, and for clothing made in Bangladesh the duty is 0% under Everything But Arms, with import VAT that a VAT-registered business recovers. Our guide to importing clothing into the EU covers that route step by step.

Once those goods are in free circulation in the EU, selling them to a consumer is not a distance sale of imported goods, because the goods are already inside the EU at the moment of sale. So neither the €3 nor the €2 applies to orders posted from an EU warehouse. Two exceptions from the guidance: goods sold while they are still in a customs warehouse, and so not yet cleared, are caught, and so are parcels already sold to individual customers that are shipped in together.

Three ways to handle it

The third route has its own rules. Under the General Product Safety Regulation, every consumer product placed on the EU market needs a responsible economic operator established in the EU, and the business importing the goods must handle the import VAT. Ask an accountant whether the volume justifies it. If it does, the stock can go straight from the factory to the EU warehouse instead of making a second trip from your home market.

What is still open

• Wider scope. The regulation required the Commission to assess by 1 October 2026 whether trade is being diverted around the duty and, if so, to propose extending the €3 to all goods in consignments up to €150.
• After July 2028. The €3 ends on 1 July 2028, when the EU Customs Data Hub for e-commerce is due to start. From then, distance sales of any value pay the normal duty rate. The Commission must assess by 1 December 2027 whether the Data Hub will be ready, and may propose keeping the €3 longer if it is not.
• A lower fee for EU-based stock. From 1 July 2028 a new kind of customs warehouse for distance sales becomes available, with a lower handling fee for goods sold from it. The amount has not been set.

What to do this month

• Ask your carrier or IOSS intermediary how they will bill the €3 and the €2, and which declaration they file.
• Check that every style, colour and size has a stable SKU, and that your carrier receives it with each parcel.
• Update the shipping and duty lines at your EU checkout before 1 November.
• Count your EU orders. If they are steady, price the EU-warehouse route against the per-parcel charges.

We make knitwear for European brands from 150 pieces per style and per colour, on our own floor in Narayanganj, with organic cotton options from our GOTS-certified facility (RSC 9687) and a brand office in Amsterdam. We quote DDP, so a bulk order can be delivered duty paid to an EU warehouse. See clothing manufacturing for European brands, compare the markets in our duty guide and our guide to import VAT and GST, read importing clothing into the UK if you sell there too, or send us your brief and we will reply within one business day.