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From 1 November 2026, every item you post from the UK to a customer in the EU carries a €2 EU handling fee, on top of the €3 customs duty that has applied since 1 July and the VAT that was already due. The European Commission set the amount on 21 September. That is €5 of charges per item before VAT and postage, about £4.35 at current rates, and it is charged per item, not per parcel. A £20 product loses more than a fifth of its price to the two charges; a £100 product loses about 4%. Cheap items are where the damage is.
What the Commission decided
The new Union Customs Code came into force on 21 September 2026. It requires an EU-wide handling fee on goods sold by distance sale from outside the EU and released for free circulation, and it left the amount to the Commission. On 21 September the Commission adopted a delegated regulation setting the Union handling fee at €2 per item. The Commission's explanatory memorandum says the fee "should correspond to the approximate costs" of customs supervision, and that distance sales above €150 "are also subject to the handling fee". Member states must apply it by 1 November 2026, and the Commission will review the amount every two years.
The European Parliament and the Council have a window to object before the act is published in the Official Journal, so the €2 figure is set but not yet final in law. The Commission's customs reform page confirms the 1 November date and puts responsibility for the fee on "platforms, sellers or carriers involved in the transactions".
The charges on one EU parcel from 1 November
For a UK seller posting a business-to-consumer parcel to an EU address, the charges now stack like this.
- €3 customs duty per item on consignments up to €150, in force since 1 July 2026 and due to run until 1 July 2028. Royal Mail's EU trade guidance confirms it applies to sellers registered for IOSS and that "it will apply per line", so a parcel with three different products carries €9.
- €2 Union handling fee per item from 1 November 2026, at any consignment value.
- VAT at the customer's country rate. For consignments up to €150 sold through IOSS, or through a marketplace acting as deemed supplier, VAT is charged at checkout. Above €150, import VAT is collected on arrival unless you pay it in advance through a delivered duty paid service.
- The carrier's own charge for collecting duty, VAT and the handling fee from your customer, where you have not paid them upfront.
- Italy's national €2 fee on non-EU parcels up to €150, which was due on 1 October and has been deferred to 1 December 2026 so it can be aligned with the EU fee. Parcels imported before 30 November are exempt.
From the same date, 1 November, every item on an EU customs declaration needs a structured product identifier such as a SKU, listing ID or manufacturer code. Missing identifiers mean held parcels.
A worked example: a £20 item to Germany
Take a £20 candle sold to a customer in Munich from your own website, posted from the UK, with the seller registered for IOSS. German VAT at 19% inside the £20 price is £3.19, leaving £16.81. The €3 duty is about £2.61 and the €2 handling fee about £1.74, so £4.35 in total. If you pay those charges through a delivered duty paid service, £12.46 is left to cover the product, postage, packaging and payment fees. Tracked postage to Germany for a small parcel is £7 or more, so the sale is at best a few pounds either side of break-even.
If you do not pay the charges in advance, the customer gets a message from the carrier asking for €5 plus an admin charge before delivery. Some pay. Some refuse, and the parcel comes back at your cost with a refund request behind it. A parcel with three different items faces €15 of charges, so small mixed orders are hit harder than a single item of the same value.
Run the same numbers on a £60 item and the fixed charges are 7% of the price instead of 22%. The EU is now a market for higher-value items or bigger baskets. Low-ticket products need a higher EU price, a minimum order size or an EU-based fulfilment route.
Marketplaces, carriers and stock in the EU
Selling through Amazon, eBay, Etsy or TikTok Shop does not remove the duty or the handling fee. The marketplace collects the VAT on consignments up to €150 as deemed supplier, but the customs charges still attach to the parcel. Check the cross-border shipping settings on each platform before November and read what it says it will collect from the buyer.
For shipping direct, the choice is between delivered duty paid, where you pay everything upfront through the carrier and build it into the price, and delivered at place, where the customer pays on arrival. Carriers price the two differently, and the gap has grown now that there are three charges to collect.
The other route is to move stock into the EU. A pallet sent to an EU warehouse is a commercial import, cleared once under normal duty rates with import VAT reclaimable, and the sales that follow are domestic or intra-EU supplies with no per-item duty or handling fee. That route needs an EU VAT registration in the storage country and, for sales across the EU, the One Stop Shop. We covered how those registrations work in our guide to EU VAT for ecommerce businesses and, for Amazon sellers, in the Pan-EU FBA listing deadlines.
What to do before 1 November
Split your EU orders from the last three months by order value and by number of items. Anything under about £25 per item is a candidate for a higher EU price, a bundle or removal from EU listings. Decide whether you will prepay the charges or let the customer pay, and if you are switching to delivered duty paid, get the carrier's November rate card. Make sure every product has a SKU or manufacturer identifier in your shipping software. If you post to Italy, the Italian €2 arrives on 1 December, a month after the EU fee, so Italian orders in December carry €7 of charges per item unless Rome changes course again. Record duty and handling fees as a cost of sale in your bookkeeping, not as VAT, so they stay out of your VAT return.
Frequently asked questions
Does the €2 handling fee apply if I am registered for IOSS?
Yes. IOSS deals with VAT only. The €3 duty and the €2 handling fee are customs charges and apply to distance sales released for free circulation whether or not the VAT was collected through IOSS. Royal Mail's guidance makes the same point about the €3 duty.
Is the handling fee per parcel or per item?
Per item. The delegated regulation sets the fee as "EUR 2 per item", and the €3 duty is applied per line on the customs declaration in the same way. A parcel containing three different products carries €15 of charges from 1 November.
Does the handling fee apply to orders over €150?
Yes. The Commission's memorandum says distance sales above €150 are also subject to the handling fee, although it did not count them when estimating the total. The €3 duty, by contrast, only applies to consignments up to €150; above that, normal duty rates apply.
Has Italy's €2 parcel fee been dropped?
No, it has been deferred for a third time, to 1 December 2026, so that it can sit alongside the EU fee. Whether Italy keeps a separate national charge on top of the EU one is still open. Until it is settled, price Italian orders on the assumption that both apply from December.
Next steps
Selling into the EU from the UK is still worthwhile for the right products at the right price, and from November the numbers need redoing product by product. Ecommerce Accountants works with UK sellers on the UK VAT side of cross-border sales, including zero-rating exports correctly and keeping duty and handling fees out of your VAT return. Read our ecommerce VAT page for how we help, or book a discovery call to go through your EU pricing before 1 November.
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