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last mo.

France Extends Customs Powers to Police Rerouted Low-Value E‑Commerce Parcels

EU-wide duties due in July are expected to shut cross-border loopholes.

Des colis dans un centre de tri postal.
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Fondé il y a 25 ans, l’aéroport situé à Vatry, à 150 kilomètres de Paris, subit de plein fouet les conséquences de l’imposition de la taxe sur les petits colis.
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Overview

  • French authorities, which announced reinforced checks Wednesday, authorized customs to inspect parcels inside France even if they were cleared in another EU country.
  • France’s €2 charge per item category on parcels under €150 took effect March 1 and platforms such as Shein, Temu, and AliExpress have been accused of flying goods to other EU hubs and trucking them into France to avoid it.
  • An EU flat duty of €3 per item category will start July 1 on EU soil and will stack with France’s levy, and the commerce minister says this should end the current routing workaround.
  • EU institutions also approved new processing fees due by November 1, 2026, and penalties of up to 6% of a platform’s prior-year EU imports for selling dangerous products, which aim to fund tougher checks and curb unsafe goods.
  • The scale is large, with Europe receiving about 5.8 billion small parcels in 2025, mostly from China, and France seeing items in such parcels surge from roughly 170 million in 2022 to 828 million in 2025.