A €2 Fee on Parcels From Outside Europe, and the Gateways It Meets

From Sunday 1 November the European Union will add a €2 processing fee to parcels imported from outside the bloc, The Local Italy reported, in an effort to reduce the influx of cheap Chinese goods bought online. The charge comes on top of a €3 EU tax recently imposed on small parcels, the outlet said.

The fee targets a specific kind of traffic: low-value, single-item consignments ordered online and cleared at the bloc's external customs frontier. Where that clearance happens decides who absorbs the charge, and the report does not say how the fee will be collected or at which point in the journey it is levied.

For the northern Adriatic the measure attaches to a familiar function. Trieste's port is the region's principal customs and logistics frontier for goods arriving from outside the European Union, and the fee will meet those imports somewhere along that route.