EU Makes Temu, Shein, AliExpress Legal Importers: Fines Up to 6% of Sales Now Possible

By Roger Satterfield Published: Sep 04 2026, 11:22 AM EDT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Share on Reddit Share on Flipboard Share on Pocket An illustration photo taken on April 24, 2025 shows the logos of Chinese shopping app Taobao (2ndR), Chinese shopping app AliExpress (L), Chinese e-commerce company Shein app (R) and online marketplace Temu on a smartphone screen in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images The Council of the European Union formally adopted a sweeping overhaul of its customs law on September 3, completing the most comprehensive restructuring of European import rules in decades and locking in a new legal regime — primarily targeting Temu, Shein, AliExpress, and Amazon — that makes non-EU e-commerce platforms directly responsible as legal importers, under EU Council document CM 3931/26 . The adoption caps a three-year legislative push and layers on top of a €3 (approximately $3.48) per-item flat duty that has already been in effect since July 1. EU shoppers who have grown accustomed to duty-free bargains from Chinese online platforms will encounter a two-stage cost adjustment: the €3 ($3.48) flat customs duty that has applied to every sub-€150 ($174) import since July 1, and a second handling fee — amount still to be set by the European Commission — that member states must begin applying no later than November 1, 2026. Together, the two charges are designed to eliminate the competitive advantage that non-EU platforms derived from a decades-old exemption that allowed goods valued below €150 ($174) to enter the bloc without duties. From Loophole to Liability: What the Law Now Requires The most consequential shift in the new Union Customs Code is not a fee — it is a legal redefinition. Under the previous framework, the individual EU consumer who clicked "buy" on a foreign website was technically classified as the importer of the goods they purchased. That classification meant platforms like Temu, Shein, and AliExpress bore no formal liability for customs paperwork, duty payment, or product safety compliance on millions of individual shipments. The revised code eliminates that arrangement. Non-EU e-commerce platforms selling into the bloc are now classified as the legal importer of the goods they sell, directly responsible for ensuring customs formalities are handled, correct duties are assessed, and goods comply with EU product standards before reaching European consumers. For platforms that fail to meet these obligations systematically, the consequences are substantial. Companies repeatedly flouting EU rules can face fines of between 1 and 6 percent of their total annual import value into the EU over the prior 12 months. For Temu — which serves 92 million users across the EU and is owned by China's PDD Holdings Inc. — a 6 percent penalty on its European import volume could run into hundreds of millions of dollars. For AliExpress parent Alibaba, the potential figure is larger still. The liability shift also activates EU product safety law in a way that purely transactional customs obligations do not. As recognized importers, the platforms are now legally responsible under the General Product Safety Regulation for safety certifications and chemical testing — exposure that could result not only in financial penalties but in market bans on products that fail compliance. What EU Shoppers Pay: Decoding the Two-Layer Cost Structure The fee architecture is deliberately staged. The €3 ($3.48) flat duty that took effect July 1 is a bridge measure, designed to be collected under existing mechanisms until the full EU Customs Data Hub is operational for e-commerce transactions in July 2028. It applies per tariff category within a consignment — not simply per parcel. An order containing one T-shirt and one watch carries a €6 ($6.95) charge because those items fall under two separate customs categories; an order of three identical items carries a single €3 ($3.48) charge. The second layer — the EU-wide handling fee — will be set by the European Commission before member states begin applying it by November 1. Officials and logistics analysts have indicated the fee is likely to land in the range of €2 to €3 (approximately $2.32 to $3.48), though the Commission has not confirmed a final figure. The handling fee is intended to offset the administrative burden on national customs offices processing what amounted to nearly 6 billion low-value e-commerce parcels in 2025 — a volume representing 97 percent of all incoming EU shipments, more than 90 percent of them originating from China. Customs inspection rates have fallen sharply as volumes surged: from 203 inspections per million imported items in 2022 to just 65 per million in 2025. The economics of the cheap-parcel business model that powered the rise of Temu and Shein in Europe have shifted. Platforms are already responding: Shein has been expanding EU warehouse capacity in anticipation of per-shipment costs, and AliExpress has announced it will make pricing labels clearer to reflect the new charges. Why Most Products Entering the EU Already Break the Rules The push toward importer liability was accelerated by a body of inspection data that made the scale of the non-compliance problem visible to policymakers. In 2025, an EU-wide customs control operation across all 27 member states found that more than 60 percent of inspected products — spanning cosmetics, toys, electronics, personal protective equipment, and food supplements — failed EU compliance standards . Specific product categories fared worse: 65 percent of cosmetics and 63 percent of food supplements inspected were found to be non-compliant, with failures including missing labels, unauthorized ingredients, and absent safety documentation. The share of parcels deliberately undervalued to avoid duty scrutiny is estimated at 65 percent, representing a significant source of revenue loss for member state governments. The enforcement record against Chinese platforms in particular pre-dates the new customs framework. In May 2026, the European Commission fined Temu €200 million (approximately $232 million) under the Digital Services Act for failing to adequately assess the risks posed by illegal and unsafe products on its platform, including baby toys containing excessive chemicals and chargers that failed basic safety tests. Two months later, AliExpress was hit with a €550 million DSA fine — the largest ever imposed under that law — after the Commission determined the platform had allocated insufficient staff to verify products and failed to remove unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics for multiple weeks after detection. Shein faces a formal DSA investigation, opened in February 2026, covering the sale of illegal products and addictive platform design. EU Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen summarized the Commission's position on AliExpress: the spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, and dangerous cosmetics was not, she said, an unavoidable cost of online shopping but a failure by the platform to meet its legal obligations. Does EU Data Security Drive the New Customs Architecture? Buried in the technical specifications of the reform is a provision that extends well beyond administrative modernization. The new Union Customs Code mandates the creation of an EU Customs Data Hub — a centralized digital platform designed to replace the 111 separate national customs IT systems currently operating across the EU's 27 member states. The Council's own legislative record specifies that the hub's infrastructure must be located exclusively within EU territory, solely controlled and administered by the European Commission or the EU Customs Authority, and that suppliers or subcontractors involved in the development, hosting, operation, or maintenance of the hub "are obliged to be legally established in the Union and must not be directly or indirectly controlled by a third-country undertaking." In practice, that language constitutes a procurement rule that bars entities with Chinese, Russian, or other third-country state links from having any role in processing EU customs data — including the data generated by the very goods Temu, Shein, and AliExpress ship into the bloc. The provision reflects a calculation that the same data-sovereignty concerns that govern sensitive government IT procurement apply to the infrastructure through which 6 billion annual shipments are tracked and cleared. The hub will operate on a three-tier risk-management architecture: the Commission sets common risk criteria and policy orientations, the EU Customs Authority performs Union-level threat assessments and issues control recommendations to national authorities, and national customs administrations implement those recommendations and conduct inspections. Platforms that achieve "Trust and Check" status — requiring near-real-time electronic record access for customs — will be able to release goods without waiting for customs intervention, a significant operational advantage for compliant operators. Use of the data hub will become mandatory for e-commerce businesses on July 1, 2028, and for all traders by March 1, 2034. Where Is the New EU Customs Agency Going? The reform creates an entirely new European institutional actor: the EU Customs Authority (EUCA), a decentralized EU agency headquartered in Lille, France , expected to begin operations in 2027 with approximately 285 staff. The EUCA will not conduct border inspections itself — that function remains with national customs services — but will serve as the operational intelligence layer above them: performing Union-level risk analysis, conducting threat assessments, coordinating joint customs operations, managing the Customs Data Hub, and overseeing the Trust and Check trader compliance program. A crisis response cell will give the EUCA the authority to coordinate emergency customs interventions across member states, addressing a recognized gap in the current fragmented structure. A minimum list of infringements has also been established for member states to transpose into national legislation, harmonizing a penalty regime that has historically varied significantly across the bloc. The Transatlantic Parallel: How the US Moved First The EU's closure of its low-value duty exemption follows a comparable shift in the United States, where the Trump administration ended the $800 de minimis threshold for goods from China and Hong Kong in May 2025, then suspended the exemption globally on August 29, 2025. The convergence of American and European policy means that the direct-from-China low-cost model that sustained the rapid growth of Temu and Shein faces coordinated enforcement on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously. The EU's approach differs from the US removal in one key respect: rather than a blanket suspension, the EU has built a parallel data infrastructure — the Customs Data Hub — that is designed to handle the billions of annual shipments digitally, applying risk-based targeting to concentrate inspection resources on non-compliant shipments while accelerating clearance for trusted operators. Trusted Traders: Who Benefits From the New System The reform is not uniformly punitive. For e-commerce operators and logistics companies willing to invest in compliance, the Trust and Check program offers meaningful operational advantages: streamlined customs procedures, the ability to release goods independently without customs intervention, deferred customs debt payment , and reduced control rates. To qualify, operators must meet stringent criteria — including providing customs authorities with near-real-time access to electronic records and operational data. The system is designed explicitly to redirect enforcement resources away from low-risk, high-compliance operators toward the segment of the market where non-compliance is documented and chronic. What Comes Next With the Council's adoption complete as of September 3, the legislation moves to the European Parliament for its second reading. The Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee voted in favor of the final compromise text in April 2026, and the committee's chair sent a letter indicating she would recommend the plenary accept the Council's position without amendments at second reading — making Parliament's approval in September 2026 a formality rather than a genuine deliberation. Once published in the EU's Official Journal, the reform enters into force on a rolling timetable. For logistics operators, customs brokers, and global supply-chain managers, the decade-long implementation window to the 2034 mandatory Data Hub deadline provides time to adapt. But the near-term costs are already in motion: the €3 ($3.48) flat duty is live, the handling fee arrives by November, platform importer liability is enacted, and the DSA enforcement record signals that Brussels will use the full range of its legal tools against platforms that continue to treat compliance as optional. The era of frictionless, low-cost parcel shipping into Europe's single market has formally ended. Currency conversions throughout this article are based on approximate EUR/USD exchange rates at time of publication and are subject to change. Frequently Asked Questions Will prices on Temu and Shein actually go up for EU shoppers? Yes — and some of the increase has already arrived. A €3 (approximately $3.48) flat customs duty per tariff category within each shipment has applied to all imported goods valued under €150 ($174) since July 1, 2026. A second handling fee, amount to be confirmed by the European Commission, is expected to apply from November 1. Platforms can absorb these costs, pass them to consumers, or offset them by moving inventory to EU-based warehouses — Shein has already been expanding its EU warehouse footprint to reduce per-shipment customs exposure. What does it mean that Temu and AliExpress are now classified as "legal importers"? Under previous EU law, the individual consumer was technically the importer of goods bought from a foreign website. The new Union Customs Code makes the platform itself the legal importer — responsible for filing customs declarations, paying duties, ensuring goods meet EU product safety standards, and bearing financial liability if they do not. This also activates the General Product Safety Regulation, making platforms legally accountable for safety certifications that previously fell outside their formal obligations. What is the EU Customs Data Hub and why does it exclude non-EU companies? The EU Customs Data Hub is a centralized digital platform designed to replace 111 separate national customs IT systems across the EU's 27 member states. It will be mandatory for e-commerce operators from July 2028 and for all traders from March 2034. Its development and operation requirements specifically prohibit suppliers or subcontractors "directly or indirectly controlled by a third-country undertaking" — a provision that effectively bars entities linked to Chinese or Russian state interests from processing EU customs data. The rule reflects a judgment that customs data on nearly 6 billion annual shipments constitutes sensitive infrastructure requiring the same sovereignty protections applied to other critical EU digital systems. Can EU shoppers do anything to understand the full cost before they check out? From November 1, 2026, platforms classified as importers are required to calculate and collect both the flat duty and the handling fee at the point of purchase — meaning the total landed cost should appear at checkout rather than arriving as a surprise at the door. Until then, shoppers buying from non-EU platforms can expect to pay the €3 ($3.48) per-category duty, and should check whether the platform has invested in EU warehouse infrastructure (which eliminates per-shipment customs charges), which AliExpress and Shein have both been expanding. ⓒ 2026 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Tags: Shein E-commerce Join the Discussion