‘Pakestaks’ of two euros should give Europe a grip on Temu and Shein

The bargains of Temu, Shein and other non-European web store platforms must become more expensive, according to the European Commission. That is why a ‘package tax’ of two euros must apply. The intention is that those costs will be paid by the web stores.

The European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič has for this sent a draft legislative to the European Parliament, which continued NRC has been seen. The proposal scraps a provision that no money is requested for customs controls, and replaces that with the introduction of fixed ‘administration costs’ per product. Recognized importers could get a lower rate of 50 cents.

Nearly five billion packages

Last year 4.6 billion cheap packages entered the EU. That amounts to around 12 million shipments a day. That enormous influx is not to keep up with customs services and supervisors, so that, according to the EU, many unsafe products are entering the European market. The proposed levy must ensure that there is more money to carry out checks.

The control work is now very unevenly distributed. The vast majority of the packages enter the EU through six countries and must be checked there. Of all European customs, the Dutch gets the most to process: a quarter of all shipments, or three million a day.

« Those packages are not cheap at all for society, » says MEP Gotink (NSC), who points to the « high social costs » for customs controls, among other things. Gotink is conducting negotiations on behalf of the European Parliament to reform European customs rules. « To absorb part of those costs and to lower the electricity of individual packages, a tax is a logical step. »

Exemption

At the beginning of this month, an exception rule was deleted in the United States, so that from now on about web store packages from abroad import duties paid become. Previously, shipments with a value of up to 800 dollars were exempt from import taxes.

The EU has a similar exemption scheme, although the limit here is 150 euros. Brussels also wants to delete that exception, but it is expected that it will only happen in 2027. This was the fear that Chinese shopping platforms would focus their arrows even more on the EU in the interim period. It all took the French government too long, and it called on in the meantime to introduce a parcel tax. That seems to have ensured that the European Commission wants to take action faster. If EU countries are going to introduce its own taxes, a waterbed effect could arise where packages still find their way through ‘cheap’ countries.

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