Since 1 July 2026, the customs duty relief for consignments below €150 has gone. Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 of 11 February 2026 replaces it, until 1 July 2028, with a flat duty of €3 per item — but in two cases only.
The measure was reported as a matter of tariffs. That is not what we see on live files: what changes is the characterisation of the transaction, and that is where most controls will bite.
The €3 flat duty is not the general rule
Article 2 of the regulation confines the flat duty to two situations: where the import is exempt from VAT under the Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS), or where the goods are in a postal consignment.
Outside those two cases the Common Customs Tariff applies, in full granularity. Leaving IOSS therefore does not avoid the flat duty: it moves you into a heavier regime.
Article 3 also requires the Commission to assess, from 1 October 2026 and monthly thereafter, whether trade is being diverted — notably from IOSS to non-IOSS — and to propose, where appropriate, extending the flat duty to all consignments under €150. Avoidance structures built today have a short life expectancy.
The pivotal moment: acceptance of payment
Whether a transaction is a distance sale of imported goods (B2C) or an importation by an established operator (B2B) does not turn on commercial intent, but on objective facts and their sequence in time.
The determining moment is acceptance of payment, which fixes the time of supply. At that instant, two questions decide everything: where are the goods, and who is the buyer?
The four elements of a distance sale
A transaction is a distance sale of imported goods where, cumulatively:
- the goods are supplied by a taxable person, including a deemed supplier;
- to a customer in the Union, typically a non-taxable person;
- the goods are outside the Union at the time of supply;
- they are dispatched by or on behalf of the supplier, including through indirect intervention.
If any one of those elements is missing, the transaction is not a distance sale.
Three situations the authorities recharacterise
- Goods sold from a customs warehouse. They do not have Union status and are treated as outside the EU: the sale remains a distance sale. Retail sale from the warehouse is in any event prohibited, and prior release for free circulation is required.
- The "B2B declared too early". A B2B declaration where the sale to the consumer has already taken place while the goods were still outside the Union is recharacterised as a distance sale.
- Grouping parcels. Combining consignments with different consignees in order to cross the €150 threshold and move to ad valorem treatment is detectable — individual references, frequency, no identified buyer — and gets recalculated.
A consignment is defined by the same consignor, the same consignee and the same transport contract. Goods ordered or dispatched separately remain distinct consignments, even if they arrive on the same day.
H7 or H1
The H7 declaration is reserved for consignments to a private individual without an EORI number, valued at no more than €150, free of prohibitions and restrictions and free of excise goods.
The H1 declaration becomes mandatory again for any B2B flow whatever its value, for any consignment containing goods subject to prohibitions or restrictions or to excise duty, and wherever one of the H7 eligibility criteria is not met. An importer EORI number appearing on an H7 declaration causes it to be rejected and re-filed as H1.
The former relief code has not been usable since 1 July 2026.
A cash-flow point that is often overlooked
Release remains conditional on payment or on a guarantee. For multiple declarations over a period, a comprehensive guarantee is required, and its reference amount corresponds to the estimate of the duties expected.
An undersized reference amount blocks releases at peak trading. This is a far more frequent operational problem than litigation, and it is prevented by calculation.
Note too that the flat duty paid is no longer refundable by invalidating the declaration for returned goods. Only the general rules on repayment remain.
Product identifiers, mandatory from 1 November 2026
Optional since 1 July 2026, product identifiers become mandatory on 1 November 2026, at item level: merchant identifier, manufacturer identifier, and standardised identifier where one exists.
Supplying them voluntarily in the meantime allows you to run in your data chains without exposure to penalties — the administration expressly invites AEO-certified operators to do so.
To our mind this is also the most structural point of the reform. A customs data point today passes through six actors — seller, marketplace, freight forwarder, customs representative, carrier — without a single substantive check, while the declarant remains liable for it. Product identifiers make it possible to tie a data point back to whoever issued it. Customs compliance stops being a matter of correct declarations and becomes a matter of certifying the data all along the chain.
What we recommend
- Check how every flow has been characterised since 1 July 2026: a mischaracterised flow is corrected across the whole period.
- Audit system traceability — timestamping of orders, payments and releases for free circulation — because that is what investigations will target.
- Put a screening process in place for new "B2B" importers appearing since the reform: EORI number, substance, solvency.
- Size and monitor the reference amount of your comprehensive guarantee.
- Obtain written undertakings from marketplaces and suppliers on product identifiers, classification and origin.
Sources
Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 of 11 February 2026, published in the Official Journal of 18 February 2026. TAXUD guidance of 2 June 2026 and the Belgian customs administration's communication on low-value distance sales.
Certain national rules and codes remain subject to change when the final texts are published. This note is an informational summary: it is no substitute for a case-by-case analysis.
Our overall reading of the reform — EU Customs Authority, Data Hub, Trust and Check and the certification of data — is set out on our Customs law advice page.
Would you like your flows checked? Let us talk.