EU Low-Value Parcel Fee Draws Warning From Global Postal Union Chief

A warning from the postal establishment

The body that runs the world's mail system has now spoken publicly about Europe's crackdown on cheap parcels. Masahiko Metoki, Director General of the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), told the PostEurop 2026 General Assembly and Business Forum in Baku that the EU's new charge on low-value parcels could seriously affect the global postal and logistics industry and reach millions of buyers.21 He said the measure touches consumers, e-commerce companies, postal operators, logistics providers and government agencies, both inside the EU and beyond it.2122

Metoki did not reject the policy. He said the goals behind it were well justified: fairer competition, tighter customs control and a response to fast-growing cross-border e-commerce volumes.21 He also said the sector is widely worried about how the rules will work in practice and what they will cost the wider economy.22 He added that other countries and regions are bringing in their own customs requirements, and that these changes raise questions for the UPU's treaty and operating frameworks. He said these issues will come up at upcoming UPU meetings.22

The timing of his remarks matters. Three months into the new regime, the debate has moved past whether Europe should end duty-free treatment for small parcels. The question now is who pays for the shift and which part of the supply chain changes shape.

What the EU actually changed

On 1 July 2026, the EU ended the de minimis exemption that had let consignments worth up to €150 enter without customs duty. In its place came a flat €3 duty.125 The charge is set per tariff line, not per parcel. Seven T-shirts declared under one code pay €3 once. Add USB cables under a different code and the bill rises to €6. Goods of different origins in the same parcel can also trigger separate charges.25 Reuters reported that the product categories are based on six-digit tariff codes, so ten pairs of identical socks cost €3, while socks split between wool and cotton cost €6.3

The consumer is not the legal debtor. The importer of record, usually the platform, the seller or an appointed representative, owes the duty. The duty is not automatically refunded if goods are returned.25 Postal shipments are covered too: UPU-network operators have to rely on customs data from partners in the country of dispatch.25

The duty is meant to be temporary. It runs until 1 July 2028. By then the EU Customs Data Hub is due to replace it with ordinary classification-based tariffs.47 The arrangement grew out of a Council agreement in November 2025 and a wider customs reform that Parliament and member states agreed in March 2026.7

More charges are coming. Tax-compliance tracker VATCalc reports that the new EU Customs Code, published on 19 September 2026, adds a €2 handling fee on parcels under €150 from 1 November 2026. The Council agreed it on 3 September.12 Product identifiers are also set to become mandatory on low-value shipments in November.79 Some member states moved first. Romania brought in a fee of roughly €5 per shipment in January, France a €2-per-item charge in March, and Royal Mail reports that Italy added a €2 administration fee from 1 October.1418

The UPU coverage does not quite match the legislative record. Metoki is quoted as describing a "processing fee" starting 1 July.2122 The July measure was in fact the €3 customs duty, and the separate handling fee arrives in November.12 Whichever charge he meant, his concern applies to both layers. Each one requires item-level data and new collection processes that postal operators have to build.

Why Brussels moved, and the numbers behind it

The main justification is volume. The Commission says low-value parcels arriving in the bloc rose from about 1.3 billion in 2022 to 5.9 billion in 2025, with roughly 90% coming from China.2 Reuters put the 2024 figure at 4.6 billion, double the previous year.3 Low-value consignments make up about 97% of imported items but only around 2% of import value.7 The average low-value parcel was worth less than €9.25

Regulators read that gap as evidence of abuse. Coverage cites estimates that up to 65% of small parcels are undervalued to stay below the threshold, and describes sellers splitting orders into several shipments to avoid duty.207 The Commission also cited a 2025 finding that more than 60% of low-value imports failed safety or compliance standards.7 Retail groups such as EuroCommerce welcomed the change as a step toward fairer trade.9

Postal operators carried this flow for years on terms that rarely suited them. A 2020 study for the European Commission estimated that about 70% of light e-commerce consignments travelled through the international postal network. It found that UPU terminal dues often failed to cover handling and delivery costs in destination countries, and that postal customs clearance was largely paper-based and checked by sampling.23 The postal channel effectively became the main pipeline for cross-border e-commerce goods.23 That background explains why Metoki is uneasy. The EU is now redesigning a flow in which postal networks have a structural stake.

Early results: fewer parcels, bigger baskets

The first data suggest the duty has had a real effect, though estimates vary widely. Europe's consumer organisation BEUC cited estimates of a 30% to 70% drop in parcel volumes. French customs put the EU-wide fall in small-parcel imports at 30% to 40%. Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported that Shein and Temu arrivals at Liège Airport had halved.34 French bank-transaction data from Joko showed Temu volumes down 50% between June and July, AliExpress down 37% and Shein down 15%.33 Shein reported European revenue down 13.9% year on year in the second quarter.33

Transaction data from Consumer Edge show the same pattern. Across Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, Shein's share of apparel spending fell from about 7% in spring to under 5% in September. Temu's share of online broadline spending fell from about 7% to 4.5%. UK shares held steady over the same period.31 Order counts fell while average basket size rose, which suggests shoppers are combining purchases to limit the per-parcel cost.31

Some of the price effect on Temu and Shein is plain to see. For the cheapest goods, analyst Juozas Kaziukėnas says the duty has sometimes doubled the total cost of an order. He notes that Temu lists the fee separately, while Shein has built it into prices.34 Search-marketing firm smec estimates Temu's average order value at about €30, which makes a single €3 charge roughly equal to a 10% tariff.36

Some forecasts got it wrong. In July, a widely shared argument said the fee would not slow the two platforms in 2026 and that their European growth would stay positive through September.32 The share and volume data available so far point the other way. Still, part of that thesis holds up: the platforms are moving fulfilment into Europe.

The real shift: from postal parcels to warehouses

This is where Metoki's warning matters most. Temu aims to ship 80% of its European sales from local warehouses.33 It has reportedly built ten self-operated EU warehouses and cut air freight to about 35% of EU-bound volume.37 Shein opened a large hub near Wrocław in Poland.233 Amazon said 97% of its EU shipments were already fulfilled from inside the bloc.9 Goods imported in bulk clear customs once, as a commercial shipment, rather than generating millions of separate consumer-level duty events.37

The policy, in other words, is reducing parcel traffic more than demand, and that hits international postal and air-cargo networks directly. One consultant predicted EU-bound e-commerce air shipments could fall 10% to 35% as platforms reroute.37 Logistics analysts expect demand to move from single low-value air parcels toward bulk clearance, EU warehousing and domestic last-mile delivery.32 Trade publication Trans.info argues that third-party logistics firms with the right scale stand to gain.25

The US shows how badly things can go. After the United States withdrew its de minimis exemption on 29 August 2025, UPU data showed 88 postal operators suspending some or all service to the US, and postal flows from member countries fell 81% week on week.25 Europe has avoided a collapse like that. Its measure is milder and was signalled months in advance.32 But the US episode shows how exposed the postal system is when customs rules change faster than data systems can keep up.

The reading

Metoki's position is cautious, but it is not obstruction. He accepts the EU's aims while warning that implementation costs fall on postal operators, many outside Europe, that had no say in the rules.2122 The evidence supports both halves of that. The duty is changing behaviour, with fewer orders, larger baskets and Temu and Shein losing share.31 It is also shifting cross-border e-commerce away from the postal channel and into warehouses that only the largest platforms can afford to build.3237

The November handling fee, mandatory product identifiers and the move to full tariffs in 2028 will add to the pressure.712 For European retailers, the measure works. For the international postal system, it means losing a large share of the traffic it had come to depend on, and having to rebuild its data systems for what is left.