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Date Published: 21/05/2025

Shopping on Temu or Shein? The EU wants to add another fee to your order

Last year, an incredible 4.17 billion packages were shipped from China-based retailers to Spain and the rest of Europe

If you’ve noticed Temu or Shein ads popping up everywhere lately, you’re not imagining things. These online platforms have exploded in popularity across Europe, shipping billions of low-cost items straight from China to customers’ doors. Now, the European Commission is planning a new move that could affect those packages, along with your wallet.

Earlier this week, European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic told the European Parliament's Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection that the EU is planning to introduce a €2 fee on small packages entering the bloc. The vast majority of these packages are coming from China through platforms like Temu and Shein.

Mr Sefcovic called the surge in deliveries an “enormous flood” and said it “represents a new challenge for control, security” and for making sure these products comply with EU standards.

“We're talking about two euros per package paid by the platform. And if it's for services offered by the warehouses where those packages are stored, it's even less, 0.50 euros,” he explained.

The Trade Commissioner stressed that this is not a new tax, but rather a fee to “offset” the cost of managing the sheer volume of shipments customs officials now handle.

This idea was actually first outlined in a document published back in February, where Brussels suggested reforms to how the EU’s Customs Union operates. Among the changes was this small-package fee, which they are now actively moving forward with.

According to that same document, 91% of all parcels valued at less than €150 that arrived in the EU in 2024 came from China. That added up to 4.17 billion products, double the amount from the year before.

The report also linked this boom directly to the “extremely rapid growth of certain online shopping platforms” and mentioned the “exponential growth” of Temu and Shein specifically.

Still, Mr Sefcovic was clear that the measure is not meant to target any one country.

“This is the mechanism we are proposing, but we are only at the beginning of the process,” he said. The plan is for customs authorities to collect the fee, which would then go into the EU budget.

Either way, the change is coming, so if you’ve been stocking up on online bargains, this new fee could soon make those low prices seem just a little less irresistible.

In other news: Alcampo begins store closures in Spain: Is you local supermarket on the list?

Image: Liquinoid via Wikimedia Commons

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