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They finally do something about it, was about time. I wonder how big Chinese platforms are going to avoid it.
A €3 duty, to which the carriers will apply a €12 surcharge for acting as an agent to collect that €3

I understand paying import duties and VAT, but they need to make it frictionless and abolish these “agents” for consumer imports.

Can anybody eli5 this law please?

If I read it right, I’d need to pay €3 on each item when Aliexpress bundles 20 1€ items together - €60 in tax for €20 worth of items, or effectively a 300% tax. That’s what the language implies with “applied to each different item, …, contained in a consignment.”

That’s not just a tax on revenue, or an incentive to buy locally - it’s prohibitory. Do they want to obliterate the "direct-to-consumer" cheap goods for good with this?

But who this law protects anyway? Most of “local” sellers that offer Aliexpress-kind of items (where else can I find my “stainless steel meat shredder claws” but there!?) basically drop ship from Taobao and the like in bulk. And this law now forces me to use them. What’s the point of this? A tiny revenue stream from handling fees? But even these drop shippers don’t offer much in terms of variety. Nor do or possibly can the supposedly big warehouses of Aliexpress-like platforms located within EU - it’s just not feasible. So this law implies that unregulated variety is a luxury now?