Shipping into Europe? Here’s how the EU de minimis changes affect you
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As of today, 1st July 2026, the rules around shipping low-value parcels into the European Union have changed. If you're a brand currently fulfilling EU orders from the UK or any other country outside the EU, this affects your landed costs, your pricing, and potentially your fulfilment operation.
What was the EU de minimis threshold?
Until today, the EU operated a customs duty exemption on goods valued under €150. This meant that low-value parcels shipped into the EU from outside it, including from the UK post-Brexit, entered without attracting customs duty. VAT still applied through the Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS) system, but duty was waived entirely on sub-€150 shipments.
For ecommerce brands shipping directly to EU consumers from a UK or non-EU warehouse, this exemption made cross-border fulfilment economically viable. The duty-free threshold absorbed a cost that would otherwise have made small-order economics extremely difficult.
The problem now, however, is that the threshold no longer exists.
What has changed as of 1st July 2026?
The EU has abolished the €150 de minimis exemption entirely and replaced it with a new flat customs duty structure on low-value parcels entering the EU from outside it. The new duty works as follows:
A flat €3 customs duty applies per Harmonised System (HS) code per parcel. The duty is applied per tariff classification, not per item quantity. In practice , this means:
A parcel containing three hoodies attracts a single €3 duty, because all hoodies fall under the same tariff classification
A parcel containing three hoodies and a watch, however, attracts €6 duty, because the hoodies and the watch fall under two different tariff classifications
The seller or importer is responsible for declaring and paying the duty as part of the customs process. For most ecommerce brands, this means the duty either gets passed to the customer at checkout or absorbed into the cost of the order.
The change applies to goods shipped from any non-EU country, including the UK, the US, China, and anywhere else outside the EU's customs territory.
Why has the EU made this change?
The official rationale covers several areas. The existing exemption gave non-EU sellers a structural cost advantage over EU-based businesses competing for the same customers. It also created a significant volume of low-value parcels that bypassed customs inspection entirely, creating a route for unsafe or non-compliant products to enter the EU market undetected.
Every day, millions of low-value parcels enter the EU, and many contain products that don't meet EU safety standards or are deliberately undervalued to avoid duties. The new measure is designed to address that, alongside levelling the competitive landscape for EU-based businesses.
For brands with compliant, fairly-priced products, the policy intent is less relevant than the commercial impact. The cost has gone up, but the real question is by how much, and what can you do about it.
What does this mean for brands shipping UK to EU?
If you're currently fulfilling EU orders from a UK warehouse and shipping directly to EU consumers, the impact will be immediate.
Every order you ship into the EU now attracts at least €3 in customs duty, per HS code in that parcel. For single-SKU orders, that's a flat €3. For multi-category orders, it compounds. On a low average order value, that's a meaningful addition to landed cost.
There are three ways brands absorb this:
Pass it to the customer: Add the duty to the checkout price or display it as a separate line at checkout under Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) terms. Transparent but potentially damaging to conversion, particularly against EU-based competitors who don't face the same cost.
Absorb it into your margin: Keep the customer-facing price the same and take the hit internally. This is only viable if your margins can sustain it, and it becomes increasingly difficult as order volumes grow.
Change your fulfilment model: Move EU inventory into an EU-based fulfilment facility so that orders to EU customers are fulfilled from within the EU. No cross-border shipment, no duty. This is the option most brands with meaningful EU volume are seriously considering.
Managing the changes with an EU-based 3PL
The most commercially sustainable response to this change is to fulfil EU orders from within the EU. If your inventory is held in an EU 3PL warehouse and your orders to EU customers originate from that facility, the new duty doesn't apply. The parcel isn't crossing an external border.
This is the same structural shift that drove a scramble for US-based fulfilment last year when US tariff changes made direct cross-border shipping from the UK and EU economically painful for brands selling into the American market.
“We saw how this played out when the US scrapped its de minimis exemption last year. A lot of brands didn’t move quickly enough and once the charges hit they were left with two options: swallow the cost and take the margin hit or stop shipping to the market and watch competitors take their market share. The brands that pivoted quickly and localised fulfilment were the ones that made a positive out of the change.” - Ben Kaye, CRO, fulfilment.com
For brands with meaningful EU sales volume, the maths tends to favour EU fulfilment relatively quickly. The cost of holding inventory in an EU facility and paying local storage and fulfilment fees is typically lower, at any reasonable volume, than absorbing €3 or more in duty on every order plus the friction of cross-border customs processing.
Here’s what changes operationally with EU-based fulfilment:
Inbound shipping: Instead of shipping direct to EU customers from the UK, you're shipping a bulk consignment of inventory into the EU and storing it at a fulfilment facility. Inbound freight costs replace per-parcel duty costs. At volume, this is almost always cheaper.
Customs on inbound: You'll still pay import duty when you send inventory into the EU in bulk, but this is assessed once on the total consignment rather than per parcel on every individual order. The administrative burden is significantly lower and the economics are typically better.
VAT registration: Selling to EU consumers from an EU fulfilment facility requires VAT compliance in the markets you're selling into. IOSS is no longer sufficient if you're holding inventory in the EU. You'll need local VAT registration or to use a fiscal representative in each relevant market, or operate under the EU's One-Stop Shop (OSS) scheme where applicable.
Choosing the right EU hub: The location of your EU fulfilment centre affects your carrier costs, your delivery times across different EU markets, and your access to carrier networks. The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and Poland are commonly used as EU fulfilment hubs for UK brands due to their central location and strong logistics infrastructure. The right choice depends on where your EU customers are concentrated.
“If the EU has been on your roadmap, now’s a strong time to make the move. A lot of competitors will hesitate or pull back while they work out what these changes mean for them and that opens up room for the brands that get their fulfilment and pricing right early.” - Ben Kaye, CRO, fulfilment.com
What do the EU de minimis changes mean for 3PLs?
For 3PL operators, this change creates a predictable surge in demand for EU-based fulfilment capacity from UK and non-EU brands. The pattern mirrors what happened in the US market when tariff changes made direct cross-border shipping economically unviable for many brands.
Brands that have been fulfilling EU orders from a UK-based 3PL warehouse are now actively looking for EU 3PL partners, and many will be moving quickly given the change came into effect today. The brands most likely to act fast are those with higher EU order volumes where the duty cost compounds most painfully.
For brands not yet ready to move inventory into an EU facility, offering Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) shipping into the EU is the most viable short-term alternative. DDP means the seller takes responsibility for the duty at the point of sale, giving the customer a clean, all-inclusive price at checkout rather than an unexpected customs charge on delivery. 3PLs that can support DDP shipping from outside the EU, with the right carrier relationships and customs clearance infrastructure in place, are well positioned to serve brands in the transitional period before they commit to EU localisation.
For 3PLs with EU capacity, the opportunity is real and the timing is immediate. Being visible to brands actively searching for EU fulfilment solutions right now is the priority.
What to do if you're affected
If you're a brand currently shipping into the EU from outside it, the immediate steps are:
Quantify the impact: Calculate your average EU order value, your typical number of HS codes per parcel, and your monthly EU order volume. That gives you a monthly duty cost figure to work with.
Model the alternatives: Compare that duty cost against the total cost of EU-based fulfilment: inbound freight, storage fees, pick and pack rates, and any VAT compliance costs. For most brands with more than a few hundred EU orders per month, EU fulfilment will be cheaper. If you’d like help with this, our expert team can do it for you!
Move quickly: The brands that move inventory into EU facilities now will be able to continue fulfilling EU orders competitively. The ones that wait will absorb duty costs for longer while their competitors don't.
Get your HS codes right: Under the new system, the number of HS codes in a parcel directly affects duty cost. Accurate HS code classification on your products is now a commercial priority, not just a compliance one.
How we can help
At fulfilment.com, we match brands with vetted 3PL providers across Europe. If you're looking for an EU fulfilment partner in response to the EU de minimis changes, we can help you find a provider that fits your volume, product category, and target markets, all in a timely manner to minimise the impact of today’s shift.
