Online shopping in Spain faces new EU charge as €2 parcel fee begins November 1

Anyone in Spain who orders cheap clothes, phone cases or gadgets from outside the EU has had a €3 customs charge hanging over their basket since July. Well, from Sunday there’s a second one, though whether it ever shows up on a receipt is uncertain.

A second charge arrives on Sunday November 1 

People in Spain who shop on Temu, Shein and AliExpress will face a new €2 EU handling fee on qualifying parcels from Sunday November 1. It follows the €3 customs duty brought in on Wednesday July 1, and is meant to cover the cost to customs authorities of checking the flood of small parcels now arriving from outside the EU.

That flood is huge. The EU received about 5.9 billion low-value items in 2025, around 16 million a day, with 93 per cent of them from China, according to the European Commission.

It’s not a flat €2 on every parcel

However, the fee isn’t a flat €2 on each parcel. It’s charged per item on the customs paperwork, and goods of the same type count as one item, so three identical T-shirts would attract one fee while a T-shirt, a pair of sandals and a phone case could mean three.

The €3 duty works in a similar way, per type of goods rather than per parcel. Put the two together and each type of item in an order can carry €5 in extra charges, so that three-item basket could pick up €15 before the seller has added anything of its own.

Whether you’ll see it is up to the sellers

The fee is dealt with through the customs process, not at your front door. It’s settled by the platform or seller handling the paperwork, and nothing in the rules says it has to appear as a separate line on your order.

So some sellers will simply absorb the cost, while others will build it into the price or the delivery charge. Spain’s Tax Agency began a testing period for the system on Thursday October 1, according to Spanish reports.

Shoppers are already ordering less often

There are signs people are changing their habits. Francisco Aranda, president of Spanish logistics body UNO Logística, said shoppers are planning more, comparing prices and bunching several items into one order rather than buying on impulse.

Over the border in France, imports of small parcels from China have fallen by between 30 and 40 per cent since July, according to the French Ministry of Economy.

With Black Friday only weeks away, the best advice is to check the total at checkout rather than the price tag, and to see whether it says duties are included before you pay.