France wants to start charging non-European Union online sellers a handling fee for each low-value package shipped to domestic customers, government ministers said Tuesday as the country copes with an influx of cheap goods from China.<\/p>\n
Such a fee, of “a few euros” per parcel, would help cover the cost of checking the incoming billions of small packages each year ordered by European Union (EU) consumers via platforms such as Chinese-founded firms Temu and Shein.<\/p>\n
In 2024, 4.6 billion packages each worth under 150 euros entered the EU – more than 145 per second – with 91 percent originating in China<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some 800 million such packages were shipped to France alone last year. Merchandise worth less than 150 euros, excluding VAT, purchased by mail and sent directly from a third country is not subject to EU customs duties.<\/p>\n Fee paid by importers, platforms<\/p>\n France’s minister for public accounts, Amelie de Montchalin, said during a visit to Paris’s Charles-de-Gaulle airport that the handling fee should be paid “by the importers, the platforms, and not consumers”.<\/p>\n France would charge “a small flat rate” per package, which she said would amount to “a few euros”, or “a few cents” per item purchased.<\/p>\n France hopes such a move could come into force next year, with a government official saying that the fees collected “would finance the checks” at points of entry.<\/p>\n France is hoping to attract other EU members to the idea to make it harder for platforms to circumvent such a fee.<\/p>\n “We can’t do this alone, because if we do this alone the flows will go to another country,” Finance Minister Eric Lombard said during the same visit.<\/p>\n (with AFP)<\/p>\n Read more on RFI English<\/a><\/p>\n Read also:
French winemakers say ‘nightmare’ Trump tariffs could cost industry \u20ac1bn<\/a>
France says still ‘open’ to negotiation over China’s brandy tariffs<\/a>
Beijing files WTO complaint over EU’s new taxes on Chinese EVs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France wants to start charging non-European Union online sellers a handling fee for each low-value package shipped to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[32426,2000,299,1699,36,32424,32425],"class_list":{"0":"post-62786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-amelie-de-montchalin","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-government-ministers","14":"tag-handling-fee"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114426662272910605","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}