Europe polices the parcels while Colombia keeps its $200 loophole open

Wednesday: customs gets its target list

The European Commission is due to publish a customs directive on Wednesday, 30 September↗, that puts customs authorities on the goods platforms such as Temu and Shein ship straight to European doors ¹. Priority checks go to online purchases posing "serious safety risks" or breaching consumer law; the product list will be set with member states ¹. The exemption those parcels rode on is already gone.

Three rewrites of one rule since February

The European Council approved the end of the €150 duty-free threshold on 11 February, with a €3 interim duty per product category from 1 July ². The duty went live as scheduled ⁴. On 3 September the Council made non-EU platforms the legal importer of every parcel they sell, punishable at 1 to 6% of annual EU import value, plus a handling fee due by 1 November ⁶.

Between the bookends came enforcement: Brussels fined Temu €200 million under the Digital Services Act↗ on 28 May over baby toys and chargers that failed safety tests, a penalty Temu called "disproportionate" ³. On 13 August a US trade court upheld the shutdown of the $800 exemption, which Congress has codified from July 2027 ⁵.

The exemption was the business model

Clothing entering the EU normally carries a 12% import duty; a parcel under €150 carried none ¹. The flow riding that rule grew from 1.4 billion shipments in 2022 to 4.6 billion in 2024, 91% from China ¹², and 5.8 billion last year ⁴. "The exemption was abused and misused on an industrial scale," said EU lawmaker Dirk Gotink ⁴. French customs counts EU small-parcel imports down 30 to 40% since July↗; June and July sales fell 50% at Temu and 15% at Shein ⁷.

The €150 rule was never a tax quirk. It was the business model.

Bogotá runs the tape backwards

Colombia moved the same direction, and its Constitutional Court pulled the rule back. The court suspended the decree that cut the VAT-exempt threshold to $50↗; from 29 January the $200 exemption returned, and postal shipments up to $200 stay duty-free ⁸. Industry groups estimate 2.2 million Temu parcels a month enter the country ⁸.

"No one can compete against a 20% disadvantage," María Fernanda Quiñones, president of the Colombian Chamber of E-Commerce, told Semana ⁸. Her chamber contests a reading of the US trade agreement under which China-made goods dispatched from the United States keep de minimis treatment; that is an interpretation, not a finding ⁸. China's ambassador Zhu Jingyang defended the platforms as the market's work and told Colombian firms to study their competitors ⁸.

The November fee sets the price of the border

Nothing in PDD Holdings' filings isolates Temu, so the duty bill has no line of its own; the consolidated curve cooled from 120% annual growth in early 2024 to 7% six quarters later, recovering to 14% in the June quarter ⁹.

Shein, cushioned by a Polish warehouse, bled least ⁴⁷. The money runs the other way: to formal retail, relieved of the 20% disadvantage Quiñones names ⁸, and to customs coffers, which lost revenue to parcels an EU estimate puts at 65% deliberately undervalued ⁶. The fork is a warehouse inside the border or duty at it.

The dated readings: the handling fee by 1 November ⁶, the Commission's first priority-product list ¹, and whether 2.2 million parcels a month still clear Bogotá at $200.