On 1 July 2026 the EU removed the €150 customs-duty exemption on low-value parcels. If you ship to European customers from outside the EU, every small parcel now carries duty it did not carry before. Read past the headlines, though, and the change is simple, and there is a clean way around it: hold your stock inside the EU and ship domestically. Here is what changed, who it affects, and what to do about it.

What changed on 1 July 2026

Until 1 July, a consignment worth €150 or less entered the EU free of customs duty. That "de minimis" exemption is gone, as confirmed by the European Commission.

In its place, a temporary flat customs duty of €3 per item applies to consignments valued at €150 or less. It is set by Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 and runs until 1 July 2028, per the European Commission. The €3 is charged per item by tariff classification; items that share the same classification can sit on one declaration line for a single €3 charge.

A separate €2 customs handling fee per declaration line follows no later than 1 November 2026, taking the combined charge to €5 per line. From the same date, product identifiers become mandatory on these declarations. So the cost lands in two steps: €3 now, €5 once the handling fee starts.

Who this actually hits

The duty lands on goods shipped from outside the EU straight to EU consumers. That is the model where a brand holds stock in the US, the UK, or Asia and posts each order across the border as a low-value parcel. If that is how you reach Italian and European customers today, the duty, and soon the handling fee, apply to every one of those parcels.

It does not touch parcels that are already inside the EU when the customer orders. Stock sitting in an EU warehouse and shipped domestically never crosses a customs line on the way to the buyer. No border, no per-parcel duty, no handling fee.

What it adds to every parcel

The charge hurts most on small orders, because it is flat. €3, and €5 from November, weighs the same on a €12 order as on a €120 one. On low-value, high-frequency products, that is a direct margin cut on every parcel you send in.

It also stacks on everything cross-border already costs you: the international postage, the slower transit, the customs holds that delay temperature-sensitive goods. Add a fixed duty on top and the cross-border route gets harder to justify on both price and speed, especially against an Amazon-style next-day promise your Italian customers now expect.

The way around it: import once, hold stock in Italy

The reset rewards one move. Import in bulk, clear customs once, and hold your European stock inside the EU. After that, every order ships domestically: no per-parcel duty, no handling fee, and delivery in 24 to 48 hours instead of the five-plus days cross-border takes into Italy.

You pay duty on the bulk import, as you would on any stock movement, and then nothing more per order. One customs event replaces thousands. Italy is a strong place to anchor that stock: it sits in the fastest-growing region of European e-commerce, close to Southern European demand, with domestic carriers that reach the whole country. We cover the why-Italy case in more depth in our look at European fulfilment trends for 2026.

How we run import-and-hold for you

We run import-and-hold from our 5,000 m² temperature-controlled warehouse in Cassano Magnago, in Lombardy. You send stock in bulk, we receive and store it, and we fulfil your Italian and European orders domestically across every channel you sell on.

  • One inbound, then domestic shipping. Clear customs once on the bulk import; every customer order after that ships inside the EU, duty-free at the parcel level.
  • 24 to 48 hour delivery in Italy. From Lombardy to the whole country, with our own carrier mix rather than a single cross-border line.
  • Your channels, one stock pool. Amazon.it, your Shopify or WooCommerce store, and 100+ marketplaces through Qapla', all shipping from the same inventory.
  • Fewer failed deliveries. Our Iris tool auto-corrects around 90% of bad Italian addresses before dispatch, so parcels arrive first time.

For brands moving stock out of a UK warehouse, this is the same logic that already answers Brexit. See our post-Brexit EU fulfilment page for that route.

What to do now

If most of what you send into the EU is low-value parcels from outside it, the maths has already changed, and it changes again in November when the handling fee starts. The sooner you hold European stock, the sooner the per-parcel charge stops applying.

Tell us what you sell and where your stock sits today, and we will map out how import-and-hold would run for your range, from the bulk inbound to domestic delivery. Read more on our sell in Italy page, or get in touch and we will work the numbers with you.