EU adds €2 customs fee on Temu, Shein and AliExpress parcels

Cheap orders from Temu, Shein and AliExpress just got more expensive again. Since 1 November, the European Union has applied a new €2 fee to small parcels arriving from China. It is charged for each item listed in the customs declaration, which in Poland works out to roughly 9 zloty at current exchange rates.

A second charge in four months

The new levy comes on top of a €3 fee that has applied since July to purchases from the same platforms. That earlier charge is imposed per product category in a shipment. According to the report, it has already contributed to a marked drop in interest in shopping on Chinese marketplaces.

Individually, €2 is not much. Combined with the July charge, however, it steadily erodes the price advantage that made ultra-cheap orders attractive in the first place, especially for baskets full of low-value items.

Why the EU is doing it

The new payment is described as a handling fee. Its purpose is to ease the burden on customs services across Europe, which are flooded with shipments from China. Last year alone they handled 5.8 billion such parcels, equivalent to almost 15.9 million per day. The money goes directly to customs authorities.

What comes next

More changes are planned. In 2028 the EU intends to set up a customs data centre, a shared system for controls and risk assessment. In practice, this could open the way to further fees, although no details have been announced yet.

For shoppers, the message is clear: the era of almost duty-free micro-orders from China is closing. Anyone ordering several different items in one go should now check the final cost at checkout, because the charges are calculated per item and per category rather than per parcel.