All you should want for Christmas is no more cheap presents

BRUSSELS — If you ordered Christmas presents from a Chinese web shop, they are likely to be toxic, unsafe or undervalued. Or all of the above. The EU is trying to do something about the flood but is tripping over itself 27 times to get there.

“It’s absolutely crazy…” sighs one EU official. The official, granted anonymity to discuss preparations to tackle the problem, said that at some airport freight hubs, an estimated 80 percent of such inbound packages don’t comply with EU safety rules.

The numbers are dizzying. In 2024, 4.6 billion small packages with contents worth less than €150 entered the EU. That all-time record was broken in September of this year.

Because these individual air-mail packages replace whole containers shipping the same product, the workload for customs officials has increased exponentially over recent years. Non-compliant, cheaply-made products — such as dangerous toys or kitchen items — bring health risks. And a growing pile of garbage.

It’s a problem for everyone along the chain. Customs officers can’t keep up; buyers end up with useless products; children are put at risk; and EU makers of similar items are undercut by unfair and untaxed competition.

With the situation on the ground becoming unmanageable, the EU agreed this month to charge a €3 fixed fee on all such packages. This will effectively remove a tax-free exemption on packages worth €150 — but only from July of next year. It’s a crude, and temporary, fix because existing customs IT systems can’t yet tax items according to their actual value.

All I want …

Which is why all European lawmaker Anna Cavazzini wants for next year’s holiday season is “better rules.”

Cavazzini is a key player in a push to harmonize the EU’s 27 national customs regimes. A proposed reform, now being discussed by the EU institutions, would create a central data hub and an EU Customs Agency, or EUCA, with oversight powers.

As is so often the case in the EU, though, the customs reform is only progressing slowly. The EUCA will be operational only from late 2026. And the data hub probably won’t be up and running until the next decade.

“We need a fundamental discussion on the Europeanization of customs,” Cavazzini told POLITICO.

As chair of the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO), the lawmaker from the German Greens has been pushing the Council, the EU’s intergovernmental branch, to allow the customs reform to make the bloc’s single market more of a unified reality.

EU capitals worry — as always — about handing over too much power to the eurocrats in Brussels. But the main outstanding issue where negotiators disagree is more prosaic: it’s about whether the law should include an explicit list of offences, such making false declarations to customs officers.

While the last round of negotiations in early December brought some progress on other areas, the unsolved penalties question has kicked the reform into 2026.

With the millions of boxes, packages and parcels inbound, regardless, individual countries are also considering handling fees, beside the €3 tax that all have agreed on. France has already proposed a solo fee with revenues flowing into its national budget, and Belgium and the Netherlands will probably follow suit.

Race to the bottom

Customs reform is what’s needed, not another round of fragmented fees and a race to the bottom, said Dirk Gotink, the European Parliament’s lead negotiator on the customs reform.

“Right now, the ideas launched by France and others are not meant to stem the flow of packages. They are just meant to earn money,” the Dutch center-right lawmaker told a recent briefing.

To inspect the myriad ways in which they are a risk, Gotink’s team bought a few items from dubious-looking web shops. “With this one, the eyes are coming off right away,” he warned before handing a plush toy to a reporter.

The reporter almost succeeded in separating the head from the creature’s body without too much effort. And thin, plastic eyes trailed the toy as it was passed around the room.

“On the box it says it’s meant for people over 15 years old…” one reporter commented. But the cute creature is clearly targeted at far younger audiences. Adding to the craze, K-pop stars excitedly unbox new characters in online promotional videos.

The troubles aren’t limited to toys. A jar of cosmetics showed by Gotink had inscriptions on its label that didn’t resemble any known alphabet.

Individual products aside, the deluge of cheap merchandise also creates unfair competition, said Cavazzini: “A lot of European companies of course also fulfill the environmental obligations and the imports don’t,” she said. “This is also creating a huge unlevel playing field.”

After the holidays, Gotink and Cavazzini will pick up negotiations on the customs reform with Cyprus, which from Jan. 1 takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU from Denmark.

“This file will be a priority during our presidency,” a Cypriot official told POLITICO, adding that Denmark had completed most of the technical work. “We aim to conclude this important file, hoping to reach a deal with the Parliament during the first months of the Cyprus Presidency.”

Despite the delays, an EU diplomat working on customs policy told POLITICO that the current speed of the policy process is unprecedented: “This huge ecommerce pressure has really made all the difference. A year ago, this would have been unimaginable.”