In 2028--or three years after the United States does something similar--Europe will abolish the exemption from customs duty on parcels worth less than €150 entering European territory.
[Now] several voices in Brussels are calling for the implementation of this measure to be speeded up, without waiting until 2028 or 2030. Some suggest dissociating the end of the €150 allowance from the rest of the major customs reform to apply it earlier.
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On Tuesday, without waiting for Europe, France announced a “rapid introduction, at the European level, of a management fee mechanism on each small parcel entering Europe” to fund controls, according to public accounts minister Amélie de Montchalin, referring to “a few euros” per parcel.
Among the online sales platforms, Shein and Temu have established themselves in just a few years as e-commerce heavyweights in France and Europe, where they have 75m users. Shein, originally Chinese but now based in Singapore, specialises in ultra-trendy, low-cost fashion, while Temu (launched by the Pinduoduo group) sells a wide range of products, from textiles to toys to high-tech gadgets, at low prices. Between them, and alongside Amazon, Shein and Temu account for around a quarter of online fashion sales in France.
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Traditionally, residents of the United States have enjoyed a very high exemption threshold: any import worth less than $800 could enter the country without customs duties or complex procedures, under the so-called “de minimis” rule. This system greatly benefited Chinese e-tailers [...] Now, this loophole is being closed. On 2 April 2025, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order abolishing the duty-free allowance for parcels originating in China and Hong Kong.
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As a direct consequence, Chinese platforms are likely to redouble their efforts on the European market, where regulations are still considered to be more lenient. “There’s no doubt about it, there’s going to be an invasion from the Indo-Pacific region,” says Michel-Édouard Leclerc, head of the distribution group that shares his surname, anticipating a massive transfer of flows to Europe in the face of the closure of the American market. The European trade commissioner, Maros Sefcovic, spoke as early as February 2025 of the risk of a veritable “tsunami” of small parcels flooding the Old Continent if no measures were taken. In fact, the European Union has set up a surveillance task force to detect any suspicious explosion in imports of this type and is ready to activate trade safeguard clauses if necessary.
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Product compliance in question
Alongside tax and customs measures, the authorities are keeping a close eye on the practices of Shein, Temu and their ilk in terms of product regulation and consumer safety. The European Commission has opened investigations into these two flagship Chinese e-commerce platforms. Shein is being investigated by Brussels on suspicion of allowing items to be sold that do not comply with European standards (whether in terms of product safety, intellectual property or regulatory compliance).
Temu, for its part, has been in the Commission's sights since last October for similar reasons, linked to placing potentially non-compliant products on the European market.
These investigations are part of the EU’s drive to make platforms accountable for the products they distribute, an issue reinforced by the entry into force of the Digital Services Act and other recent legislation on the surveillance of online markets. The results of these investigations are not yet known, but they demonstrate the increased vigilance of regulators with regard to these new players.