Temu, Shein and AliExpress lose EU parcel volume to the €3 duty. A €2 fee is next

Belgium now receives 53% fewer cheap parcels from outside the EU than a year ago, and the Netherlands 46% fewer. Both drops followed the €3 duty that the EU put on low-value parcels on 1 July. Together the two countries handle almost half of these parcels. Temu, Shein and AliExpress are losing volume, but they are not leaving Europe. They are moving stock into EU warehouses before a second charge of €2 per item starts in November.

Belgian, Dutch and French customs saw parcel numbers fall 30% to 53%

The European Commission says about 4.6 billion parcels worth under €150 entered the EU in 2024. That is about 12 million a day. According to the Council of the EU, 91% of them came from China. A Polish e-commerce chamber puts the 2025 figure at 5.9 billion items.

The Dutch numbers came from Eelco Eerenberg, the junior finance minister in charge of customs. On 1 September he told parliament that small parcels fell 46% in July and August, compared with the six months before. Before the duty, about 1 million parcels a day arrived in the Netherlands. Shein, Temu and AliExpress sent 80% to 90% of them. The new duty raised about €134 million in July, and roughly a quarter stayed with the Dutch treasury.

France reported a smaller drop of 30% to 40%. The French economy ministry also split it by company. From June to July, sales fell 50% at Temu, 37% at AliExpress and 15% at Shein. Polish traffic data show the same order. From June to September, Temu lost 26% of its Polish visitors, AliExpress 22% and Shein 18%, by our count of Mediapanel figures. Polish finance ministry data show customs declarations for cheap parcels fell from 4.24 million in June to 2.11 million in July.

The EU charges the €3 duty per type of product, not per parcel

Until June, parcels under €150 paid no customs duty. Now each product type in the parcel pays €3. The Council gives an example. Two toys, one wool coat and three bottles of shampoo count as three types, so the duty is €9. The rule runs until 1 July 2028.

The reform also changes who is responsible. Online platforms and sellers from outside the EU are treated as the importer. They handle the customs paperwork and pay the duty, not the shopper. In the most serious cases they can be fined up to 6% of a year’s import value, according to the Council’s 3 September decision.

Goods shipped in bulk to a warehouse inside the EU are treated differently. They pay normal import duty once, at the border. After that they travel to the customer like any parcel sent within the EU. Dutch customs said part of the 46% drop may come from firms switching to this model. They plan to look into it.

Shein, AliExpress and Temu each built a route through EU warehouses

Shein opened its main European logistics hub near Wroclaw, Poland, in December 2025. At full size it will have up to 740,000 square metres of space. Shein EMEA president Leonard Lin said the company was “proud to officially open” the site. Shein already struggled in Europe before the duty. Its European sales fell 13.9% in the second quarter.

AliExpress looked for warehouse partners in Poland and Czechia this summer, according to Polish site Instalki.pl. It offered them zero commission and no annual fees. On 15 October it said selected products now reach shoppers the next day in five Polish regions. It runs a similar service in Spain and France. The same day it launched Elite, a free club that gives regular buyers 5% off.

Temu opened its marketplace to European sellers in 2024. In a sponsored article in June, Temu said its local seller programme runs in more than 35 markets. In January 2025 the company said it would eventually handle 80% of European sales through local warehouses. In August 2026, PDD co-chief executive Chen Lei said the group would invest selectively in overseas transit warehouses. Temu has not said what share of EU orders it ships from Europe today.

Austria and Romania add their own charges on top of the EU duty

Since 1 October, Austria charges €2 per order, or €2.40 with VAT. It applies only to retailers that sell more than €100 million a year in Austria. The Austrian retail association counts 16 such firms, from Temu and Shein to Amazon, Zalando and Ikea. Amazon told customers the fee applies once per order. The finance ministry expects €280 million a year.

Romania adds a logistics fee of 25 lei, about €5, to each parcel from outside the EU. Deloitte Romania warned that the duty and the fee together could cost more than the goods. The Netherlands and Belgium dropped their own plans for a national fee earlier this year. Germany has no national fee and asked the Commission to move faster.

We added up what the Council’s three-item parcel will cost. Until June it paid nothing. Since July it pays €9. From November, three €2 handling fees push the total to €15. In Romania the same parcel would pay about €20.

The Commission set the November handling fee at €2 per item

The new handling fee is separate from the €3 duty. It is meant to cover the cost of checking small parcels. EU countries must start collecting it by 1 November 2026. The Commission adopted the amount on 21 September in a delegated regulation, which says the fee “shall be EUR 2 per item”.

Some retailers wanted more. Poland’s e-commerce chamber, Izba Gospodarki Elektronicznej, asked for €7 per parcel. It argued that a small fee would not make competition fair for European sellers. In Germany, Amazon already holds 63% of online retail, ahead of Otto, Zalando and Temu.

The regulation applies ten days after it appears in the EU’s Official Journal. As of 7 October it had not been published. So the next question is simple: will it be published by 22 October, in time for collection to start on 1 November?