The €3 duty was July's change. November brings a second charge on top of it, plus a new data requirement on every customs declaration. Here is what both mean for a shop sending a few parcels a month into the EU.
€2 per item, on goods sold online from outside the EU and sent to EU consumers, collected from 1 November 2026 at the latest. It is on top of the €3 duty, not instead of it.
It has no €150 limit. The €3 duty only applies to consignments worth €150 or less. The handling fee applies whatever the value.
You pay it, not your customer. It falls on whoever pays the other customs charges on the parcel, which for most small sellers means you or the carrier acting for you.
Also from 1 November: product codes become mandatory on the customs declaration for every item, starting with your own SKU.
The European Parliament adopted the EU's customs reform on 16 September 2026, the biggest change to EU customs law since 1968. One part of it is a handling fee to cover the cost of checking the flood of small parcels. In Parliament's words:
"The new rules establish a handling fee for each item bought from non-EU web shops and sent directly to EU consumers." European Parliament, 16 September 2026
The reform left the amount to the Commission. On 21 September the Commission adopted the delegated regulation that sets it. Article 1 is one sentence:
"The amount of the Union handling fee laid down in Article 20(2) of Regulation (EU) 2026/2108 shall be EUR 2 per item." Commission Delegated Regulation C(2026) 6694, 21 September 2026
Parliament says member states will collect it "at the latest from 1 November 2026". The Dutch customs authority already gives 1 November as the start date and describes it as €2 per declaration line. That matters, for the reasons in our €3 duty explainer: how many lines your parcel becomes depends on the declaration type your carrier files.
Parliament is explicit that the fee "will be paid by the same entity responsible for paying other customs charges for the same parcel, to avoid shifting the cost to consumers." For the €3 duty that is the declarant: the seller, the IOSS holder, or the carrier or representative acting for them.
The reform also makes sellers and platforms selling from outside the EU directly to EU consumers the importer of those goods. The direction is clear: the cost of getting a parcel through EU customs sits with the seller.
On a parcel worth €150 or less, the duty and the fee together come to €5 per item. Assuming one product type per order:
| EU orders per month | €3 duty / year | €2 fee / year | Together |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | €36 | €24 | €60 |
| 3 | €108 | €72 | €180 |
| 5 | €180 | €120 | €300 |
| 10 | €360 | €240 | €600 |
| 20 | €720 | €480 | €1,200 |
Multiply by the number of different product types in a typical order. A full year of the fee is shown for comparison. In 2026 it only runs for November and December.
A budget GPSR Responsible Person service starts at around €139 a year. At €5 an order, the customs charges pass that at about 28 EU orders a year, a little over two a month.
A flat €5 per item is a much bigger share of a cheap order than of an expensive one. This is where it eats the whole profit on a one-item order:
| Your margin | Before 1 Nov (€3) | From 1 Nov (€5) |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | €12.00 | €20.00 |
| 35% | €8.57 | €14.29 |
| 45% | €6.67 | €11.11 |
Below these order values, at these margins, each EU sale loses money before shipping or any compliance cost. Above €150 the €3 falls away and normal tariffs apply, but the €2 fee still does.
The line moves up by two-thirds overnight. A €15 product at 35% margin made a little on each EU order in October. In November, on these numbers, it doesn't.
Since 1 July, sellers have been able to put product identifiers on customs declarations voluntarily. From 1 November they are required. The Commission's guidance:
"The new requirement applies to all goods sold in distance sales of imported goods as from 1 November 2026. … Effective enforcement will start as from 1 November 2026." European Commission, Guidance on the EUR 3 customs duty, section 3.5.2
This is a data requirement, not a charge. Section 3.5.4 of the same guidance sets out what has to be given:
One detail matters for small makers in particular. The codes are meant to identify a product model, so that a problem found with one parcel can be traced to every parcel like it. The guidance says that assigning codes at batch or unit level, where a model-level code exists, "will as a rule be considered as an act contrary to the objective" of the requirement, and so an infringement.
Your carrier files the declaration, so in practice they will ask you for these codes. The shop's SKU usually covers the first.
Ship or Not? takes your order value, your margin and your EU volume and tells you where your break-even sits. It includes the €3 duty, the €2 handling fee and the compliance cost. It will tell you to switch EU sales off if that is the honest answer.
Run the numbersIf the numbers work but the GPSR paperwork doesn't appeal, that's what the Compliance Pack is: the documents done for your actual products, with every obligation cited to its article.