For practitioners of international trade, 1 July 2026 will remain a turning point. Not because a founding text was recast, but because the rule that had governed for half a century the treatment of almost all e-commerce flows has disappeared: the customs duty relief for low-value consignments no longer exists. The Commission noted, in its communication of 5 February 2025, that 4.6 billion low-value consignments had been imported into the Union in 2024, against 1.4 billion in 2022, roughly twelve million parcels a day, 91% of them from China. Twelve million parcels, every day. No declaratory system based on a relief could absorb such growth. Six points allow platforms, e-merchants, forwarders and logistics providers to measure what has actually changed.
The 150-euro relief has gone, not the 45-euro relief between private individuals
Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 of 11 February 2026 deleted, from 1 July 2026, Articles 23 and 24 of Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009, which exempted from duty consignments of intrinsic value not exceeding 150 euros dispatched from a third country to the Union. The repeal of Article 24 has a little-noticed consequence: the category exclusions it carried for alcohol, perfume and tobacco disappear with it, so that those products now fall within the flat-rate duty when sold at a distance. The threshold has gone, not the vigilance. The relief for private-to-private consignments, by contrast, survives in full up to 45 euros (Articles 25 to 27 of the same regulation), an economically sensitive boundary between the exempt C2C flow and the taxed B2C flow, which will necessarily invite attempts at recharacterisation and, in mirror image, targeted inspections.
The three-euro flat-rate duty is calculated per declaration line, not per parcel
The new three-euro charge, introduced until 1 July 2028, is neither a national tax nor a fee: it is a customs duty in its own right, subject to the whole regime of the Union Customs Code. Its particularity lies in the tax base: it is calculated neither per parcel nor per unit sold, but per “item”, defined as a set of goods sharing the same tariff classification, the same description and, where applicable, the same origin, hence per declaration line. The consequence is counter-intuitive: the amount due depends on the data set chosen by the operator. Two platforms, two amounts, for the same parcel. The Commission’s guidance illustrates the point with a consignment of three garments worth 140 euros in total, taxed at three euros if declared under H7 with a single tariff heading, but nine euros if declared under H1 with three distinct TARIC codes. A badly designed automated configuration can thus triple an operator’s customs burden without any irregularity, and conversely an artificial grouping of lines intended to reduce the number of items constitutes a false declaration.
The “deemed importer” is not yet in force, but three texts already are
The political agreement of 26 March 2026 on the reform of the Union Customs Code provides that platforms and distance sellers established outside the Union would be deemed importers of the goods they facilitate the sale of, but that regulation is, as at 22 August 2026, neither adopted nor published: procedure 2023/0156(COD) remains pending. Any compliance policy based on that text alone would be premature. Three bodies of rules are, by contrast, fully enforceable today: the Digital Services Act, whose Article 30 imposes on platforms an obligation of traceability of third-party sellers; the General Product Safety Regulation, whose Article 22 requires execution of removal orders within two working days; and the Market Surveillance Regulation, whose Article 4 makes, failing a manufacturer, importer or authorised representative established in the Union, the logistics provider itself the responsible economic operator. The Commission has already fined Temu 200 million euros on 28 May 2026 and AliExpress 550 million euros on 20 July 2026 for failure to assess risks diligently.
The 150-euro threshold for VAT and the one for customs no longer really coincide
The special VAT scheme for distance sales of imported goods (the IOSS one-stop shop) remains capped at 150 euros, and neither the ViDA Directive nor Regulation (EU) 2026/382 changes that cap. But a confusion must be dispelled: the IOSS is a VAT scheme which confers, of itself, no status of customs debtor. Paying VAT does not exempt from paying customs duty. The person liable for the flat-rate duty is determined by a separate cascade: the holder of the IOSS number, failing that the person using the special VAT arrangements, failing that the importer’s indirect representative, and Article 84 of the Union Customs Code creates joint and several liability between declarant and person represented. It is that mechanism, more than any provision specific to e-commerce, which today exposes express carriers and customs brokers to bearing a reassessment relating to flows whose data they did not control.
The flat-rate duty is not refundable on returns
This is probably the least anticipated point of the reform. Article 148(3) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/2446 previously allowed, within ninety days, invalidation of the release-for-free-circulation declaration for goods sold at a distance and then returned to the original supplier, opening the right to repayment of duties. Provided one asked in time. The Commission’s guidance now expressly states that this facility no longer applies to low-value consignments taxed at the flat rate, and that only the general grounds of Article 116 of the Union Customs Code remain applicable, which makes repayment mandatory only from ten euros, that is at least four items returned on the same declaration. For an operator with a 25% return rate, the three-euro duty must therefore be treated as a final unit cost, to be built into the free returns policy and the general terms of sale.
The national Customs Code has changed numbering, and the penalties with it
Ordinance No 2026-265 of 8 April 2026, in force since 1 May 2026, recodified the entire national Customs Code at constant law: Articles 410, 411, 412, 414, 415, 426, 428 and 459, familiar to all practitioners, are repealed in favour of an entirely new L. xxx-x and R. xxx-x numbering, earlier facts remaining assessed under the text then in force. A false declaration of value or origin now falls under Article R. 515-5, 2°, punishable by a fine of 3,700 euros and confiscation of the goods; a false declaration of the identity of the real consignee or consignor, frequent in dropshipping schemes, falls under 3° of the same article. The switch to the intentional offence operates through Article L. 513-8: five years’ imprisonment and a fine of twice the value of the goods concerned, raised to ten years and ten times the value for an organised group by Article L. 513-9. The post-release control of Article 48 of the Union Customs Code may moreover take place at the e-merchant, the marketplace, the forwarder or the logistics provider, even where they were never declarants.
Guyader Avocat has published a complete practical guide on the 2026 European customs reform, detailing the mechanism of the flat-rate duty, the interplay with VAT and the one-stop shop, the current liability of platforms, the handling of returns and the scale of recodified penalties. It is available free of charge, on simple registration: Download the guide “European customs reform 2026”.
For assistance with an international trade transaction or dispute, see our page on international trade law and, on this specific topic, our page on customs law.
Two pages describe the firm’s intervention on the practical side of the reform: Incoterms and international sales, since the customs status of the goods follows the delivery term, and challenging a customs reassessment when the administration disputes the classification, origin or value declared.
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