European textile and clothing federations urged Brussels on Tuesday to set a new parcel handling fee at around 10 euros ($11.60), arguing that the 2-4 euro range currently under discussion would not cover the enforcement costs generated by the surge of cheap imports from Chinese e-commerce platforms.
The call, issued jointly by Euratex, the French Union of Textile Industries and the French Union of Fashion and Clothing Industries at the Premiere Vision trade fair in Villepinte, follows the EU’s introduction of a temporary 3-euro customs duty on low-value parcels from outside the bloc on July 1. That duty applies per tariff category rather than per item, meaning a shipment of ten identical T-shirts is charged only once.
“For ten identical items sent in the same parcel, it is applied only once. And three euros for ten items is not enough,” organisers said, according to the federations.
Euratex President Mario Jorge Machado said roughly 90% of imports into the EU now arrive as small parcels, a shift he said requires new resources for customs enforcement. The handling fee, expected to take effect this autumn, would fund a planned European customs administration, with revenue tied to market surveillance, product safety checks and risk-analysis capacity. The federations said the 2-4 euro figure currently on the table falls well short of that goal.
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A French minister delegate for industry said customs data showed parcel volumes entering Europe had fallen by nearly 40% since the earlier 3-euro duty took effect, calling the result significant but insufficient.
Valere Moutarlier, deputy director-general at the European Commission’s DG GROW, told the federations Brussels does not expect the fee level to be reopened for negotiation, though he pointed to a forthcoming European Product Act and expanded digital monitoring tools as additional enforcement measures.
The industry groups also called for online platforms to be held accountable as “deemed importers,” for standardised customs data across business-to-business and business-to-consumer flows, and for safeguards against shippers rerouting goods through European warehouses to dodge parcel-level checks.
Europe’s textile and apparel sector employs 1.3 million people across roughly 200,000 companies, most of them small and medium-sized, according to Euratex. The group said a higher fee is needed to create a level playing field as ultra-fast-fashion retailers continue to expand across the bloc.