The European Union scrapped its duty-free allowance for low-value parcels on July 1, replacing it with a flat customs charge under rules the Council of the EU gave final approval to in February. Consignments valued at 150 euros or less now carry a temporary flat duty of 3 euros per item category.
For US freelancers, Etsy sellers, and solo product businesses shipping to European customers, a shipment that used to clear customs free now carries a cost that has to come out of margin or go onto the invoice. There is no threshold to stay under anymore.
What The New Rule Actually Does
The old system let consignments worth 150 euros or less enter the EU without customs duty. That exemption is gone. In its place sits a flat 3 euro duty applied to goods entering the EU where the non-EU seller is registered in the EU’s Import One-Stop Shop for VAT purposes.
The charge is levied per item category, meaning per tariff heading, rather than per parcel. A single box holding three different product types can therefore attract three separate 3 euro charges.
The flat fee is explicitly transitional. It runs until July 1, 2028, when the EU Customs Data Hub for e-commerce is expected to be operational and normal duties based on each product’s tariff classification take over.
Why This Matters For Self-Employed Sellers
The volumes involved explain the policy. The European Commission counted roughly 4.6 billion low-value consignments entering the EU in 2024, close to 12 million parcels a day, rising to almost 5.9 billion items in 2025.
Solo sellers sit at the sharp end of that math. On a 25 euro handmade item, 3 euros of duty is a 12% hit before shipping, payment processing, or platform fees. On a multi-item order, the per-category structure can stack charges in ways a flat per-parcel fee would not.
There is also an operational cost. Accurate tariff headings, IOSS registration, and clear customer-facing duty disclosure all become things a one-person business has to get right rather than nice-to-haves.
What Self-Employed Sellers Should Do Next
Work out your actual exposure before changing prices. Pull your last quarter of EU orders, count how many distinct product categories appear in a typical order, and multiply. Sellers who ship single-item orders will see a very different number from those who bundle.
Decide now whether you absorb the duty, pass it through at checkout, or set an EU minimum order value that makes the fee proportionally smaller. Surprise charges on delivery are the version most likely to produce refund requests and poor reviews.
Confirm your IOSS status and your product classifications with whoever handles your shipping. The rule keys off IOSS registration, so getting that wrong changes how the charge is applied and who collects it.
What To Watch Next
The 2028 handover is the real deadline. When the flat fee expires and full tariff-based duties apply, per-item costs will vary by product rather than sitting at a predictable 3 euros, which means pricing built around the flat fee will need rebuilding.
Watch input costs on the domestic side too, since cross-border charges land on top of them. Our coverage of May producer prices jumping 1.1% shows how quickly the cost base can move underneath a solo operation.
Finally, watch how marketplaces respond. Etsy, eBay, and similar platforms serve large numbers of microbusinesses, and whether they build the duty into checkout or leave it to individual sellers will shape how much of this lands on the seller directly.
Photo by Shutter Speed: Unsplash
