Since Sunday 1 November the EU handling fee is charged once for every item line on the customs declaration.
Take the example PwC Estonia gives: a €100 parcel with a T-shirt, headphones, a phone case and a toy. Four different products, which on the board’s logic make four lines on the declaration. €12 in duty, €8 in fees, €20 before VAT. The amount comes from Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/2152.
The Estonian Tax and Customs Board says the fee is charged for each item in a consignment, whatever the consignment is worth.
What counts as a line
What counts as an item? DimWeigh, quoting the Commission’s own example, defines an item as goods in the same consignment that share an HS subheading and an origin: five cotton T-shirts are one item, a T-shirt and a watch are two. A €60 parcel holding the T-shirts and the watch pays €6 in duty and €4 in fees. Kaari Lainevool of the customs board told ERR that 100 pairs of identical jeans go on a single goods line, and the board’s notice gives the other direction: three different goods mean €9 in duty and €6 in handling fees.
The fee covers parcels sent by businesses to private individuals. Business-to-business trade and gifts between individuals are outside it.
The fee as a share of the parcel
Four of the sources’ examples side by side show the weight of the EU handling fee. The duty column is the €3 per line charged since 1 July.
| Parcel | Lines | Duty only | Duty plus fee | Fee share of parcel value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PwC Estonia, €100 parcel | 4 | €12 | €20 | 8% |
| DimWeigh, €60 parcel | 2 | €6 | €10 | 6.7% |
| Two T-shirts, declared on two lines | 2 | €6 | €10 | not given |
| Two T-shirts, declared on one line | 1 | €3 | €5 | not given |
Inside a parcel of up to €150 every line carries the same €5 in duty and fee, so the cheaper the line, the bigger its share. Forwarder News puts the jump on a typical mixed parcel at €3 a line before the fee and €5 after, which is €2 more on a base of €3.
The date that counts is the date of the declaration. A parcel ordered in October and declared on 1 November pays, and a declaration invalidated later gets no refund of the fee. Forwarder News counts every extra six-digit code on a consumer entry as €2 more, or €5 on parcels up to €150 while the flat duty lasts.
Liège Bierset, July
The €3 duty came first, on 1 July, four months before the fee. Liège airport published early figures. E-commerce shipments into its customs zone fell 24% year on year in July and 41% against June, Air Cargo News reported on 14 August. Customs declarations fell 52% year on year. B2C shipments under €150 dropped sharply. B2C shipments above that value rose 10%, which a customs source described as a rapid adaptation by logistics operators.
Liège reports its split around €150, the value up to which the €3 duty applies. The fee has no such ceiling. DimWeigh’s €400 jacket sold to a customer in France pays normal jacket duty, no €3, and €2 on top, which is half a percent of the price.
Euronews, citing the Commission, reports that small-parcel arrivals fell 60% between July and September. Five million parcels still reach the EU every day. Of those parcels in 2024, 91% came from China.
One declaration, two bills
The Estonian board shows the effect with two identical T-shirts in one parcel. Declared on two lines, they pay €6 in duty. Declared on a single line, €3. Add the €2 fee per line (the board gives only the duty figures, the rest is addition) and the fee comes to €4 in the first case and €2 in the second, so a parcel up to €150 pays €10 or €5 in total, depending on how the goods are keyed in. For a broker who is also tracking the consignment, the air waybill lookup sits next to that line count.
The board counts the lines actually declared, and Forwarder News expects that brokers who split goods into needlessly fine lines will cost their clients money, while sellers push for broader grouping.
Who pays and how VAT treats the fee
Euronews says platforms, sellers or carriers pay, member states collect, and 75% of the money goes to the EU budget. The Estonian board is looser: the fee may be charged at checkout or become payable on import, depending on the shop. PwC Estonia adds that when a seller uses the IOSS scheme, taxes and fees are generally already in the order price and the consumer cannot declare the parcel themselves.
The Commission’s VAT addendum, revised on 6 October, expects the fee to be part of the VAT taxable amount as an incidental expense of the supply, and says that under IOSS no VAT is due on the fee at import. Where the seller charges the fee at checkout the guidance has it enter the IOSS VAT return. Forwarder News calls VAT treatment unclear and advises taking advice before invoicing the fee. DimWeigh calls the fee a payment outside the scope of VAT, a reading the addendum does not follow, and PwC Estonia lists the fee in the VAT base.
Volume may move away from the parcel stream altogether. Dutch customs said in September, as quoted by Forwarder News, that more companies were opting for bulk import and storage in the EU, which Forwarder News reads as a shift away from per-parcel entries, since a pallet entered business-to-business into a warehouse does not pay the per-line fee on each consumer parcel. The temporary €3 duty runs to 30 June 2028. DimWeigh gives 1 July 2028 as the start of a second handling fee for goods released from customs warehouses for distance sales, and says the Commission has indicated it will be lower.