EU Customs Reform 2026: €3 Duty and the End of De Minimis
Since 1 July 2026 the EU charges a flat €3 customs duty per item category on low-value parcels imported from outside the Union, until 1 July 2028. Goods shipped from a warehouse inside the EU, such as a Polish wholesaler's, are not affected.
Since 1 July 2026 low-value parcels from outside the EU no longer enter duty-free. A temporary flat duty of €3 applies to each item category in a parcel worth up to €150, until 1 July 2028. It hits sellers shipping directly from third countries. Goods shipped from stock inside the EU, such as a Polish wholesaler's, are not imports and pay no duty.
Key takeaways
- From 1 July 2026 to 1 July 2028 a flat €3 customs duty applies per item category in low-value (up to €150) distance-sale parcels imported into the EU.
- The duty is counted per tariff classification, not per parcel: five T-shirts cost €3, a T-shirt plus a watch cost €6.
- The duty is owed by the declarant — the seller, the IOSS holder or their representative — and the EU says it is not a tax on consumers.
- Product identifiers become mandatory in these customs declarations from 1 November 2026.
- The €22 threshold that many guides mention was a VAT exemption, abolished on 1 July 2021 — it was never the customs threshold.
- Goods shipped to the customer from a warehouse inside the EU are not imports, so neither the €3 duty nor IOSS applies to them.
What changed in EU customs rules on 1 July 2026?
Until 30 June 2026, parcels worth up to €150 sent from outside the EU were exempt from customs duty. Since 1 July 2026 e-commerce parcels pay a flat €3 duty on each item category, agreed by the Council, until 1 July 2028. It is a temporary bridge until full customs rules take over.
The legal basis is Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, together with implementing rules published in June 2026, as described in the European Commission's guidance on the temporary flat fee. The Council's stated reasons were the influx of unsafe and undervalued goods, unfair competition for EU sellers and fraud.
| Rule | Before 1 July 2026 | From 1 July 2026 to 1 July 2028 |
|---|---|---|
| Customs duty on distance-sale parcels up to €150 from outside the EU | None (duty relief) | €3 per item category (tariff classification) |
| VAT on those parcels | Due since 1 July 2021, via IOSS or at import | Unchanged |
| Product identifiers in the customs declaration | Not required | Voluntary from 1 July 2026, mandatory from 1 November 2026 |
| Goods shipped from a warehouse inside the EU | No customs | No customs |
Was the €22 threshold a customs exemption?
No. The €22 figure was a VAT exemption for small imported consignments, and it was abolished on 1 July 2021, when VAT became due on all commercial imports regardless of value. The customs duty relief was the €150 threshold. Confusing the two leads to wrong cost calculations: VAT on cheap imports has been payable for five years, and in July 2026 customs duty was added on top.
How is the €3 duty calculated: per parcel or per item?
Per item category, not per parcel and not per unit. The Commission's guidance counts one "item" for each different tariff classification declared in a consignment. Several identical products count once; two different products count twice. The parcel must still have an intrinsic value of up to €150 — above that, the normal customs tariff for each product applies, as before.
The Commission's own example shows the effect:
| Parcel contents | Item categories | Customs duty |
|---|---|---|
| 5 T-shirts | 1 | €3 |
| 1 T-shirt + 1 watch | 2 | €6 |
Source: European Commission guidance on the temporary flat fee. The Commission's Access2Markets notice adds that, because of current IT limitations, the €3 is applied per declaration line.
For a dropshipper this matters most with bundles. A supplier outside the EU who packs a phone case, a cable and a screen protector into one parcel creates three item categories and €9 of duty, even if the whole parcel is worth €20.
Who pays the €3 duty: the seller, the marketplace or the customer?
The declarant pays it — in practice the seller or importer, the IOSS holder, a user of the special arrangements, or their representative. The Commission's guidance states that the €3 duty is not a tax on consumers; the consumer pays only in residual cases. A shop shipping from outside the EU has to price the duty in.
The duty applies whatever VAT route the parcel takes: IOSS, the special arrangements or standard import VAT. According to the Council, parcels from sellers registered in the import one-stop shop (IOSS) cover 93% of all e-commerce flows into the EU. Narrow exceptions exist, for example for goods with preferential origin when VAT is not collected through IOSS; the Commission's guidance lists them.
What does this mean for marketplace sellers?
If you list goods on a marketplace and they reach the customer straight from a supplier outside the EU, the duty is part of your cost — whether your supplier, your logistics partner or the marketplace's import scheme handles the declaration. Check in writing who files the declaration and who is invoiced for the duty. Do not assume the platform absorbs it.
Does the €3 duty apply to goods shipped from a warehouse inside the EU?
No. The flat fee covers distance sales of goods imported from third countries. When a wholesaler ships from its warehouse in Poland to a customer in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia or Hungary, the parcel never crosses the EU customs border: no declaration, no €3 duty, no IOSS. That makes a warehouse-first supply chain the simplest answer to the reform.
If the goods were made outside the EU, customs duty is not avoided in this model — it is paid once, earlier, when the wholesaler imports them in bulk under normal tariff rules, and it is already in the wholesale price. What disappears is the per-parcel duty, the per-parcel declaration and the clearance time at the border.
| Supplier ships each order from outside the EU | Wholesaler ships from stock inside the EU | |
|---|---|---|
| Customs duty per parcel (≤ €150) | €3 per item category, 1 Jul 2026 – 1 Jul 2028 | None |
| VAT handling | IOSS or import VAT at the border | Domestic VAT, or OSS for sales to other EU countries |
| Customs declaration per parcel | Yes, with product identifiers from 1 Nov 2026 | No |
| Customs clearance before delivery | Yes | No |
| Where the duty sits | Your margin, order by order | Already in the wholesale price |
How does this work when you sell through GAPLI?
GAPLI is a Polish full-dropshipping platform: the seller connects an Allegro, Erli or Aderlo account or a WooCommerce or Shopify store, and GAPLI supplies products from partner wholesalers, forwards orders, tracks parcels, issues customer invoices and settles the money. For the Polish market the catalogue comes from partner wholesalers that ship the goods directly to the customer from their own stock, so a GAPLI order is not an import parcel and the €3 duty does not apply to it.
As of 8 Oct 2026, the catalogue held 980,891 products available for sale from 161 active wholesalers (GAPLI database). How the supply side works is described on How GAPLI works. The glossary entry on de minimis and EU customs 2026 gives the short definition.
How do VAT OSS, IOSS and customs duty fit together?
They are three separate things. Customs duty is the new €3 per item category on low-value imports. IOSS is a VAT scheme for imported parcels worth up to €150. OSS is a VAT scheme for sales from one EU country to consumers in another. Goods from outside the EU meet the first two; goods from an EU warehouse only OSS.
| Customs duty (flat €3) | IOSS | OSS (Union scheme) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Customs duty | VAT scheme for imports | VAT scheme for intra-EU sales |
| Applies to | Distance-sale parcels up to €150 imported from outside the EU | Distance sales of imported goods in consignments up to €150 | Intra-EU distance sales of goods to consumers |
| Since | 1 July 2026 (until 1 July 2028) | 1 July 2021 | 1 July 2021 |
| Return | Part of the customs declaration | Monthly | Quarterly |
| Relevant to goods from an EU warehouse? | No | No | Yes, for sales to other EU countries |
Sources: European Commission flat-fee guidance, Commission page on low-value consignments, VAT One Stop Shop portal.
When does a seller need OSS?
When intra-EU distance sales of goods exceed €10,000 in a calendar year, VAT is due in the customer's country rather than where the goods are dispatched, according to the Commission's place-of-taxation rules. OSS lets the seller declare that VAT in one quarterly return at home instead of registering in each country. In GAPLI, GAPLI eCommerce PSA is the seller towards the customer and issues the customer invoice in KSeF, so that invoice — and the VAT on it — comes from GAPLI, not from you.
How much does the €3 duty change the margin on a cheap product?
The cheaper the product, the bigger the share the duty takes. On a €10 item shipped from outside the EU, €3 is 30% of the price; on a €50 item it is 6%. A three-category bundle adds €9. Where margins were thinner than that, the duty turns items into loss-makers unless prices or the supply route change.
The table is simple arithmetic, not market data: it shows the duty as a share of the selling price for one parcel shipped from outside the EU.
| Selling price of the parcel | Item categories | Duty | Duty as % of price |
|---|---|---|---|
| €10 | 1 | €3 | 30% |
| €20 | 1 | €3 | 15% |
| €20 | 3 | €9 | 45% |
| €50 | 1 | €3 | 6% |
| €140 | 2 | €6 | ~4% |
Two practical consequences follow. First, recalculate margins per offer, not per category average — a bestseller at €9.99 can drop below zero while the category still looks healthy. Second, look at bundles first: the per-item-category rule makes mixed bundles from outside the EU the most expensive format.
What else should go into the cost calculation?
Besides the duty, count import VAT (via IOSS or at the border), the marketplace commission, delivery and the cost of returns. On Allegro the commission is calculated at the moment of purchase on the price including the delivery cost paid by the buyer, as Allegro's help centre explains. For the cross-border side of the margin — currencies, foreign Allegro sites and returns — see our guide to cross-border dropshipping in Europe.
What comes next: product identifiers and the 2028 rules?
Two dates follow. From 1 November 2026, product identifiers become mandatory in the customs declarations for these low-value consignments; since 1 July 2026 they could be given voluntarily. From 1 July 2028, the flat fee is due to end and goods under €150 will pay the normal tariff for their classification, once the EU Customs Data Hub is running.
According to the Commission's Access2Markets notice, the 2028 switch depends on that infrastructure and the flat fee may be extended if it is not operational in time. The Council also said the measure "may be extended as appropriate". Plan for the €3 regime at least until mid-2028, and expect per-product tariffs after that — which for some product groups will cost more than €3.
What should a dropshipper check now?
Start with where each product ships from. Anything that reaches the customer from outside the EU now carries a customs cost, a customs declaration and, from November, product identifiers. Anything shipped from an EU warehouse carries none of that. Sorting the catalogue by origin tells you where the reform touches your business.
| Check | Why it matters | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Map every offer to its dispatch country | Only parcels from outside the EU pay the €3 duty | All sellers |
| Recalculate margins per offer, including €3 per item category | Low-priced items and mixed bundles lose most | Goods from outside the EU |
| Confirm in writing who files the declaration and pays the duty | The declarant owes the duty, not the consumer | Goods from outside the EU |
| Make sure EAN/GTIN or other product identifiers are available | Mandatory in the declaration from 1 November 2026 | Goods from outside the EU |
| Check IOSS registration or representative | VAT on imports up to €150 goes through IOSS or the border | Goods from outside the EU |
| Check the €10,000 intra-EU threshold | Above it, VAT is due in the customer's country (OSS) | Sales to other EU countries |
| Review delivery times in offers | Customs clearance adds time; EU stock does not | Goods from outside the EU |
If you would rather sell goods that ship from inside the EU, GAPLI's Allegro integration lists catalogue products on allegro.pl and, through Allegro's foreign sites, to buyers in Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary. Opening an account and the Start plan are free — see pricing.
Frequently asked questions
Is the €3 duty charged once per parcel?
No. It is charged per item category — each different tariff classification in the parcel. Five identical T-shirts count once (€3); a T-shirt and a watch count twice (€6). The parcel must be worth up to €150; above that, normal duty rates apply.
Does the €3 duty replace VAT on imported parcels?
No. VAT on imported goods has been due regardless of value since 1 July 2021, when the €22 VAT exemption ended. The €3 customs duty is an additional charge on top of VAT, whether VAT is collected through IOSS or at import.
Do goods from a Polish wholesaler pay the new duty?
No. When a wholesaler ships from its warehouse in Poland to a customer in the EU, the parcel is not an import. Any customs duty was paid when the wholesaler brought the goods into the EU in bulk and is already part of the wholesale price.
How long will the flat €3 fee apply?
It applies from 1 July 2026 to 1 July 2028. After that, goods under €150 are due to pay the normal tariff for their classification once the EU Customs Data Hub is operational; the EU can extend the flat fee if the infrastructure is not ready.
Does GAPLI handle customs declarations?
GAPLI's catalogue for the Polish market comes from partner wholesalers shipping from their own stock, so its orders are not import parcels and need no customs declaration. Which products and channels are available is described in the FAQ.
Sources
- GAPLI data (products in stock, active wholesalers, sales channels): GAPLI database, as of 8 Oct 2026
- Council of the EU, Customs: Council agrees to levy customs duty on small parcels as of 1 July 2026 (12 December 2025)
- European Commission, Guidance and legal text: temporary flat fee on low-value imports until 1 July 2028 (8 June 2026)
- European Commission, Access2Markets, EU applies €3 customs duty per item on low-value e-commerce consignments
- European Commission, Customs formalities for low value consignments
- European Commission, VAT One Stop Shop — the OSS schemes
- European Commission, Place of taxation (VAT)
- Allegro Help, How Allegro calculates the sales commission
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GAPLI Team
E-commerce automation & dropshipping insights.