A NEW HANDLING fee to be imposed from November on parcels ordered from outside the European Union will likely apply to each item within a package, a customs compliance expert has warned. 

The new fee, which is designed to cover costs associated with customs processing, will likely be €2, but the exact details haven’t been released yet.

The fee will be on top of the €3 customs charge which has applied to every unique item in orders worth €150 or less coming from outside the EU since 1 July, a charge imposed in a bid to improve EU security and level the playing field for businesses.

Customs compliance expert Brian Murphy told The Journal that it’s “very likely” the new handling fee will also be placed on individual items in the parcel.

“That fee is going to be on top of the customs €3 fee. So, it could double the charges again, potentially, and that’s very real and coming in very soon,” he said.

If the handling fee applies per unique item in a package, the cost of each item would increase by around €5 in total after the €3 customs fee is also applied. 

Murphy said the €3 fee was just one of a number of changes coming over the next 18 months as part of an overall EU customs reform plan. 

“It’s the largest shake-up of EU customs since 1968, and e-commerce parcels are a particular target of this plan,” he said.

“The future of e-commerce imports into the European Union is changing dramatically. It’s not just tariffs or duty anymore.”

Murphy said changes around classification of the product, packaging rules, deforestation rules and forced labour checks will all converge over the next 18 months to make imports of e-commerce goods “more complex and more costly”.

He previously said that despite the positive intention of the €3 fee, it disproportionately impacts online shoppers in Ireland, largely due to our e-commerce reliance on the UK.

Sinn Féin spokesperson on finance, Pearse Doherty, said news of the new handling fee will “come as another nasty shock to shoppers in Ireland”.

“These fees put all the burden and responsibility on ordinary people and member state’s postal services, while letting online giants like Shein and Temu off the hook,” Doherty said in a statement.

“Instead of holding these corporations to account, the EU is dumping all the responsibility on ordinary people by applying badly designed taxes on individual items.”