From 1 July 2026 a flat €3 customs duty applies to B2C consignments valued at €150 or under entering the EU. The duty is charged per customs item, meaning per HS code line, so a parcel with three different products attracts €9.
If you ship from the UK with Royal Mail or Parcelforce and use IOSS for VAT, the duty is not handled the same way in every EU country. In most destinations Royal Mail collects the duty from you under its Postal Delivered Duties Paid (PDDP) terms and bills it back. In a smaller group of countries it does not, and your customer is asked to pay the €3 plus a local postal handling fee before the parcel is released.
Countries where your customer pays the duty
In these destinations Royal Mail and Parcelforce apply "IOSS with DDU for duty". Your VAT is settled through IOSS as normal, but the €3 duty is collected from the recipient on delivery, together with a handling fee that varies by country:
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czechia
- Greece
- Hungary
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Poland
- Slovenia
Romania is a separate case. Royal Mail lists neither IOSS nor PDDP as available for Romania, and Romania applies its own RON 25 logistics tax on parcels under €150 from outside the EU, charged per shipment and payable by the sender.
Countries where the duty is prepaid
In these destinations the duty is handled under "IOSS with PDDP for duty", so the recipient pays nothing on delivery:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Cyprus
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Ireland
- Italy
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Netherlands
- Portugal
- Slovakia
- Spain
- Sweden
To make sure your shipments to these countries actually use this route, set your declarations up as described in How to configure customs and handling fees for international orders in Royal Mail's Click & Drop. That article explains where to choose the prepaid-via-IOSS option. Note that the setting only takes effect where the destination country supports it, which is why the country lists above matter.
Handling fees
Royal Mail charges a handling fee on top of the duty: 50p for Ireland and £1 for all other EU destinations. The same rates apply to PDDP, DDU and IOSS-with-PDDP items.
What we recommend
A customer who is asked for a few euros at the door often refuses the parcel, which costs you the sale and the return. If you ship to any of the countries above where the duty is not prepaid, consider EAS DDP & Delivery. It covers all 27 EU countries, so the €3 duty is handled before the parcel reaches the customer and nothing is collected on delivery. Eligible orders of €150 or less run through EAS IOSS Delivery, and higher-value orders through EAS DDP, within the same workflow. If you already use EAS IOSS, there is no separate monthly fee for it.
- Service overview and EU delivery prices: EAS Postal DDP
- EAS EU DDP Manual for UK based merchants
- EAS EU DDP Manual for non-UK merchants
To get started, contact support@easproject.com.
This is based on Royal Mail's guide "Exporting to the EU after 1 July 2026", version dated 10 September 2026. Country availability has already changed several times since July, so check the current version before relying on it. This is our current understanding and is subject to change.
Related reading: The €3 EU Customs Duty from 1 July 2026: What We Know So Far; Setting up €3 EU customs duty collection: Shopify, WooCommerce and EAS API.