New EU €3 Customs Duty: What 1st July 2026 Means for Your Orders
📌 Summary: From 1st July 2026, the EU is introducing a new customs charge on every parcel arriving from outside the EU, regardless of value. This is a major change for cross-border e-commerce, and it affects every order you place with Stickiply if you live in the EU. Here is what is changing, how much you can expect to pay, what we are doing behind the scenes to keep your experience as smooth as possible, and a deeper section for other businesses preparing for the same shift.
The headline change
Until now, parcels under €150 entered the EU without any customs duty. The €150 exemption was originally introduced to keep low-value e-commerce simple and to avoid burdening customs systems with millions of tiny charges.
From 1st July 2026, that exemption is permanently gone. Instead, every parcel under €150 will carry a flat customs duty of €3 per customs item. The new rules were agreed by the European Council on 13th November 2025 under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, with implementation details set out in Commission Delegated Regulation C(2026)2760.
The €3 flat rate is a transitional measure. It runs from 1st July 2026 until 1st July 2028. After that, the EU plans to move to a more detailed system with five tariff brackets (0%, 5%, 8%, 12%, or 17%) based on what the product actually is and where it was made.
Why the EU 🇪🇺 is doing this?
Cross-border e-commerce has grown massively over the past decade, especially low-value shipments from outside the EU. EU customs authorities estimate they now handle billions of small parcels each year. Processing all of them under the previous system, with no per-parcel revenue, became unsustainable.
Just as importantly, EU-based retailers complained that overseas sellers had a structural pricing advantage. A small business in the Netherlands selling locally has to charge VAT and could not avoid duties on imported goods. An overseas seller could ship directly to Dutch consumers and skip the duty entirely, as long as the parcel was under €150.
The new €3 charge tries to level that playing field while keeping the system simple enough to process at scale.
How the charge actually works
This is the part most people get wrong, so it is worth slowing down on.
The €3 fee is not charged per product. It is not even charged per parcel. It is charged per 'customs item'.
A customs item is defined by three things in combination: the 6-digit HS tariff code (which describes what the product is), the customs description (the written description of the product), and the country of origin (where the product was actually manufactured).
Multiple products that share all three of these things count as one customs item. That means several identical products in the same order attract one €3 charge, not several. But the moment any of the three factors change between two products in the same order, they become separate customs items, and each attracts its own €3 charge.
What this looks like with real Stickiply orders
One customs item: €3 in duty.
An order of 100 sheets of Holographic Vinyl in any finish. Same product, same HS code, same description, same origin. One charge.
Two customs items: €3 in duty.
A pack of 50 sheets of Glossy Vinyl plus 50 sheets of Matte Vinyl. Same product, different finish but same HS Code means only one charge.
Five customs items: €15 in duty.
An order containing vinyl paper, laminate film, photo paper, a pair of scissors, and a corner rounder. Five different product categories, each with its own HS code. Five separate charges.
Two customs items: €6 in duty.
A pack of 50 sheets of Glossy Vinyl, plus 50 sheets of lamination film. Similar materials and composition, different HS Codes, two charges.
Because the €3 is fixed per item, buying 100 sheets of the same product type costs the same in customs duty as buying 10. Bulk orders are now far more cost-effective than they were under the old rules, where larger orders would have crossed the €150 threshold and triggered a much larger ad-valorem duty. If you order regularly, consolidating into larger orders within the same product categories is the single biggest thing you can do to keep your customs cost down.
Two types of Stickiply products, two different stories
This is where things get more interesting for our regular customers. Our shop has two distinct product ranges, and the new €3 rules affect them differently in the long run.
Stickers, magnetic bookmarks & other customer items made by us in the UK
Custom stickers, sticker sheets, and magnetic bookmarks are made in our UK workshop. They are printed, cut, and finished here. Under the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, goods that are genuinely manufactured in the UK can qualify for preferential origin treatment, which may reduce or eliminate customs duty when entering the EU.
In theory, this means our UK-made items could be exempt from the €3 charge.
In practice, the EU has not yet confirmed how preferential origin should be declared on low-value IOSS shipments. The current customs declaration format used for IOSS (called H7) does not properly support this information. Until the EU publishes guidance, we cannot apply preferential treatment to UK-made items, and they will continue to attract the standard €3 per item.
We are watching this closely. Once the declaration process is confirmed, we will update our systems and pass the savings on for UK-made items in your basket.
Printable vinyl, laminates, photo papers, and other crafting tools
Our printable vinyl sticker paper (in all finishes including Holographic, Glossy, Matte, Metallic, Translucent, and Clear), our laminate films, our photo paper, and our crafting tools (scissors, blades, squeegees, corner rounders) are generally sourced from manufacturing partners in China & abroad. They are imported into the UK and then packed and resold to you.
These products carry Chinese country of origin. They will not qualify for UK-EU preferential treatment because they are not actually made in the UK, even though they are shipped from our UK warehouse. For these products, the €3 charge per customs item will apply from 1st July 2026 onwards.
This is an important point that often catches people out: shipping from a country is not the same as being made in a country. A product manufactured in China and stored in a UK warehouse is still Chinese-origin for customs purposes. The EU rules around origin are strict and verified through documentation, and we cannot legally declare these goods as anything other than what they are.
The new charge is due to be collected at checkout alongside VAT through our IOSS (Import One Stop Shop) system, managed by our compliance partner EAS Project. You pay the full landed cost upfront. Nothing extra owed on delivery, no carrier handling fees, no surprise charges at the door. The price you see is the price you pay.
If you have ever received a parcel from outside the EU and been hit with an unexpected charge by your delivery company, you know how frustrating that is. IOSS exists specifically to avoid that. Combined with the new €3 charge being collected the same way, you continue to get one clean price at checkout from us.
Consolidating orders saves money
Because the €3 charge is fixed per item, combining several small orders into one larger monthly or bi-monthly order across the same product categories cuts your total customs cost significantly.
Same items, same destination. €12 saved by ordering all together at once. The savings get larger the more frequently you order. If you place ten small mixed orders a year, you may be paying an extra €30 to €60 in customs duty that you could avoid by consolidating into three or four larger orders.
If you run an e-commerce business shipping to the EU
The rule changes are the same for you as they are for our customers. Here is what we recommend doing now to prepare. This is the section to skip if you are a customer rather than a seller.
Audit your HS codes
Every product you sell needs an accurate 6-digit HS code at minimum. The HS code determines how customs treats the item, how the per-item charge is calculated, and whether preferential treatment might apply once that process is clarified. If you have not reviewed your HS codes in a while, do it now. Vague, wrong, or copy-pasted codes will cause problems once the new rules take effect.
Write clear customs descriptions
Marketing product names do not work as customs descriptions. "Summer Cloud Tee" is not a customs description. "Cotton t-shirt" is. Customs don't care what's on your stickers, what design it is. They just need to know it's a sticker. The customs description should clearly tell a customs officer what the goods physically are. Each product in your catalogue needs this in addition to its consumer-facing name where allowed.
Know where your goods are actually made
For preferential origin purposes, the country of origin is where the product was manufactured or sufficiently processed, not where it was last stored or shipped from. Get this information from your suppliers in writing if you do not already have it. The EU rules are strict and the documentation trail matters. Stickiply supplies although are Chinese origin, once processed via printing, laminating, cutting by you. They will carry origin of your country, not their original Chinese origin.
Keep using IOSS
Some sellers have asked whether IOSS is still worth it after the new charge. Yes. IOSS remains the best way to ship low-value goods into the EU because it keeps the customer experience clean. The customer pays one price at checkout including VAT and now also including the €3 customs duty. Without IOSS, your parcels enter EU customs without a pre-paid arrangement, which usually means the customer gets charged at delivery, often with carrier handling fees added on top. That is a worse customer experience and tends to generate complaints, returns, and abandoned deliveries.
Stay alert for further guidance
The EU has not yet finalised the details on several important points: how preferential origin will be declared on low-value IOSS shipments, the exact payment mechanism for the new duty, the role of IOSS intermediaries in collecting it, and whether an additional EU-wide customs handling fee will be added on top. We are watching for guidance from the European Commission and from EAS, and we will update our setup as new information comes through. If you sell into the EU, you should do the same.
What happens after 1st July 2028
The €3 flat rate is a transitional measure. From 1 July 2028, the EU plans to move to a simplified tariff system with five duty brackets (0%, 5%, 8%, 12%, or 17%) applied based on the HS code and country of origin of each product. That means more variability and more administrative complexity, but also potentially lower duties on goods that genuinely qualify for preferential treatment. The €150 customs duty exemption is permanently gone and will not return.
We will write a separate post closer to the date once the EU has confirmed the bracket structure and the declaration process. Expect another headline change to manage and plan around.
Questions?
If you have any questions about how the new charges affect your specific order, email us at hello@stickiply.com and we will be happy to help. If you are another e-commerce business preparing for the change, the EAS Project guide linked below goes into more technical depth than we have here. Please note we are writing from the perspective of our own evaluation of the information currently available and we do not substitute legal advice on this topic.
Sources and further reading
- EAS, "EU €3 Customs Duty 2026: What Sellers Actually Need to Know". Detailed practical guide from our IOSS compliance partner covering item definitions, preferential origin, and seller checklist.
- European Commission, EU Customs Reform. Official EU position on the de minimis removal and the timeline through 2028.
- Council of the European Union, "Council agrees to levy customs duty on small parcels as of 1 July 2026". Formal legislative agreement of 13 November 2025.
- VATCalc, "EU €3 duty low-value e-commerce parcel imports July 2026". Independent technical breakdown of how the per-item calculation works.
- UK Government, "Rules of origin for goods moving between the UK and EU". Official UK guidance on preferential origin under the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
