French postal service, La Poste, announced on Friday they had been ‘forced to temporarily suspend’ the shipping of parcels from France to the US, as a result of new US customs regulations.
The French postal service La Poste announced in a press release on Friday that it had been obligated to temporarily suspend the shipping of parcels to the United States, due to changing US customs rules.
The suspension is due to come into effect on Monday, August 25th – although there will be an exception for gifts sent between individuals worth less than €100.
The change affects only parcels sent via the French postal service – courier companies like FedEx or Chronpost are continuing to make deliveries.
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Why this change?
In the press release, La Poste explained that the change was a result of new US customs rules.
At the end of July, the Trump administration announced it would be ending the duty and tax exemption on small parcels from August 29th.
As such, postal deliveries worth less than $800 would be subject to the same tax rate as other products imported into the US from the EU, which is expected to be 15 percent (based on the trade agreement reached at the end of July).
La Poste said it was “forced to temporarily suspend parcel shipments to the US, due to incomplete technical specifications and procedures, as well as the extremely short time frame to prepare”.
The statement added: “Despite discussions with US customs officials, no time was given to postal operators to organise and implement the IT developments necessary to comply with the new rules.
“La Poste regrets this difficult situation for its customers (…) La Poste is working closely with US authorities and postal federations to resolve this as quickly as possible.”
Several other European postal services have taken similar measures recently, such as the Belgian, Spanish, Swedish-Danish, German, and Austrian postal services.