Croatians shopping on platforms such as Temu, Shein and AliExpress will face additional costs from Sunday, 1 November, under a new European Union customs handling fee.
The new measure introduces a €2 charge for each item listed on a customs declaration for goods purchased online and shipped from outside the EU.
Importantly, the fee applies per item, not per parcel. Orders containing several products could therefore attract multiple charges.
The new fee comes on top of an existing temporary €3 customs duty on imported goods valued at up to €150, introduced across the EU on 1 July 2026.
This means shoppers could face combined fixed charges of €5 per declared item, before any applicable VAT or other customs costs.
For example, an order containing a €10 T-shirt and a €5 phone charger could attract €10 in combined customs charges, assuming VAT has already been paid through the Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) system.
If VAT has not been collected at checkout, additional costs may apply.
The handling fee is not limited to Chinese shopping platforms. It covers qualifying online purchases imported from any country outside the European Union.
Temu, Shein and AliExpress are expected to be among the most affected platforms because of the large volumes of low-value parcels they send to European consumers.
The temporary €3 customs duty is expected to remain in place until July 2028, when a new EU customs data system is scheduled to support a revised customs framework.
For Croatian shoppers, the changes could make inexpensive online purchases noticeably more expensive, particularly when orders contain multiple separately declared products.
