From 1 November a €2 EU handling fee lands on top of July's €3 import tariff: €5 before the item's own price

Anyone who shops outside the EU picked up a new date on 22 September. Douane states on its own news page that from 1 November 2026, companies filing customs declarations for e-commerce shipments pay a European handling fee, the afhandelingsvergoeding, of €2. The important word is on top. The same page says this €2 is added to the €3 import tariff that has applied since 1 July 2026 to e-commerce shipments worth up to €150; before that date those shipments carried no import duty at all. The ministry's announcement describes the €2 as charged per product group. In plain terms, one product group now carries €3 + €2 = €5 before the price of the item itself. A €12 T-shirt becomes €17, which is roughly forty per cent on top. So the next step is concrete: look at what you usually order and ask whether the unit price is high enough to absorb €5.

• Keep the two charges and their dates apart. The €3 import tariff started on 1 July 2026; the €2 handling fee starts on 1 November 2026. Douane says the handling fee covers the extra cost of processing e-commerce shipments, and the announcement names the declaring company as the payer, not the consumer directly.
• The summer step already has numbers attached. NOS reports that since import duty was charged on all parcels, the flow dropped by around 75 per cent against the same period last year, down from roughly 1.7 million parcels a day. State secretary Eelco Eerenberg says the volume still arriving is large enough to need further measures.
• Both measures come from the new EU customs code, the nDWU. Douane calls it the largest reform of the European customs system since 1968, aimed at slowing the growth in online parcels and improving inspection, because many parcels do not meet European safety requirements and create unfair competition for European manufacturers. The specific rate sits in Eerenberg's letter to parliament, Publicatie nDWU en tarief afhandelingsvergoeding.
• Three things you can do now: place orders you were going to make anyway before 1 November; merge scattered small orders to cut the number of product groups; and read the checkout total carefully, because NOS notes that although companies formally carry the charge they are likely to move it into their prices, and platforms will not all handle that the same way.

Hokimi field note: what decides the impact is not how many items you order but the unit price. €3 plus €2 on a €12 item is forty per cent; on an €80 item it is under ten. Sources: source 1, source 2 and source 3, checked on 2026-09-23.