The EU has finished rewriting the rules for every parcel that crosses its border. On 3 September the Council of the European Union adopted the revision of the Union Customs Code, which the Council itself calls the most comprehensive reform of the customs framework in decades and the largest since the customs union was created in 1968. The European Parliament still has to approve the final text this month before it is published in the Official Journal, but the political fight is over: the text is the one negotiators agreed on 26 March.
For online sellers the headline is simple. Marketplaces outside the EU that sell to European consumers become the importer of record, a handling fee on small parcels arrives on 1 November, and the penalties for getting customs wrong now scale with the value of what you import.
Why the EU rewrote its customs code
The numbers behind the reform explain the urgency. According to the Council, the customs union handles more than €4.3 trillion of trade a year. In 2025, some 84,000 customs officials collected close to €31 billion in duties while processing about 6 billion e-commerce parcels alongside more than 1.5 billion traditional trade items. The Council says over 90% of those e-commerce parcels came from China.
That flood is what the old rules could not cope with. Until 1 July 2026 a parcel worth under €150 entered the EU free of customs duty, and the consumer, not the platform, was technically the importer. The Council abolished that relief in February, replacing it with a temporary €3 duty per item on low-value distance sales that runs until 1 July 2028. France went further on its own: from 1 September, according to Euronews, an ultra-fast fashion levy charges €0.50 on underwear, €2 on a T-shirt, €9 on jeans and €12 on a jacket, rising to a cap of €19.50 per item by 2030.
The customs code reform is the structural layer beneath those stop-gap measures.
What was adopted
Platforms become the importer. Under the new code, a non-EU e-commerce platform selling into the EU is regarded as the importer of the goods, and is responsible for ensuring that all customs formalities and the payment of duties are completed. The obligation moves from the buyer at the door to the marketplace at the checkout. Tech Times names the obvious targets: Temu, Shein and AliExpress.
A handling fee on small parcels from 1 November 2026. The Council introduces an EU-wide handling fee to cover the rising cost of monitoring the parcel volumes above. Eunews reports that the Commission still has to set the amount before member states start charging it.
Penalties that scale. A new EU-level system of penalties applies to operators who fail to meet their customs obligations. For the most serious breaches, Eunews reports fines of up to 6% of the annual value of goods imported in the previous year, withdrawal of customs privileges, and restrictions on access to online platforms.
An EU Customs Authority in Lille from 2027. A new decentralised agency will coordinate the governance of the customs union, run risk-based inspections across member states and analyse constantly updated import and export data.
One data hub instead of 27 systems. Traders will submit customs and product information once, through a single online platform, rather than to each national customs system separately. The Commission describes the hub as combining machine learning, artificial intelligence and human review. The dates matter: according to Eunews, the hub becomes mandatory for e-commerce businesses on 1 July 2028 and for all traders on 1 March 2034.
Four tariff buckets instead of thousands. The Commission’s reform page explains that low-value goods will be classified into just four customs duty categories instead of the thousands of tariff lines that apply today, which is what makes duty calculation at checkout feasible for a platform.
Trust and Check traders. Transparent businesses that meet strict criteria get simplified procedures, and the most reliable can release goods into circulation without any active customs intervention at all.
Who this actually touches
The deemed-importer rule is written for marketplaces outside the EU, but the effects reach further. An EU brand that dropships from a supplier in Asia is selling goods that arrive as low-value consignments; from November each of those parcels carries a handling fee on top of the €3 duty, and the data behind them will eventually flow through the hub. A seller who uses a non-EU marketplace as a channel will see that marketplace collect duty and fee at checkout, which changes the landed price its customers compare against yours.
The reform also hands customs authorities a data set they never had: item-level information on every e-commerce parcel, linked to the platform that sold it. That is what makes the 6% fines enforceable rather than theoretical.
What it means for your business
If you sell from inside the EU, your price advantage just got real. For years European sellers competed against a €10 item that arrived duty-free from Shenzhen. Since July that item carries €3 of duty, from November a handling fee, and in France a fashion levy on top. Our view is that this is the moment to state the difference plainly on the product page: shipped from the EU, no customs surprises, delivered in days. That is a proposition, not a boast, and it is one that a well-built store can put in front of the buyer at exactly the point where the comparison happens.
If you dropship or import, budget the fee before you know it. The Commission has not set the handling fee, but 1 November is eight weeks away. Model the effect on your margin at a few plausible levels now, decide which products stop making sense, and check whether your supplier or carrier will present the fee to the customer or absorb it into your cost.
Check your product data. The four-bucket tariff and the data hub reward sellers whose catalogue carries correct classification, origin and value on every item. The hub is not mandatory for e-commerce until July 2028, but marketplaces will demand that data from you well before customs does. Clean attributes are a competitive filter, not a compliance chore.
Watch the Parliament vote and the Official Journal. Nothing here is law until publication. The dates that are already fixed, 1 November for the fee and 2027 for the Lille authority, are the ones to plan around; the amount of the fee is the number to wait for.
Our reading is that Brussels has stopped treating cross-border e-commerce as a customs exception and started treating it as the main event. The platforms that built their model on the €150 loophole will adapt, but the adaptation costs money, and for once that cost falls on them rather than on the European seller next door.
