A year ago, a group of French and European textile industry associations and entrepreneurs had signed the adoption of the “Villepinte Declaration against Ultra-Fast Fashion” and urged authorities to abolish customs duty exemption for low-value consignments and the introduction of the temporary €3 customs duty to stem the invasion of non-compliant Extra-UE country products from entering the EU market.
Today the same insiders believe that the measure is not enough to contain such a phenomenon.
“One year ago, right here, we were being told that nothing could be done. Since then, the €150 exemption has been abolished and a €3 customs duty has entered into force: proof that Europe can act when it decides to. But a €3 duty that is paid only once for ten identical garments is not a response commensurate with the scale of the problem,” commented Pierre-François Le Louët, co-president, UFIMH (French Union of Fashion and Apparel Industries).
Today they are asking the European Commission and the Member States to introduce a more meaningful EU-wide handling fee. The fee should be set at a level that more realistically reflects the costs of customs processing, risk analysis, logistics, market surveillance and product-safety enforcement.
According to these insiders, estimates of a €10 fee per parcel could provide a more realistic amount to face authorities’ involvement in checking parcels, while the final amount should remain proportionate and be based on a robust assessment of the actual enforcement it requires.
“Every parcel entering the Union generates a cost: customs controls, product safety, market surveillance, and waste management. Today, that cost is borne by European taxpayers and by the companies that comply with the rules. A €10 handling fee is not a tax: it reflects the real cost of a business model that has so far passed its external costs on to others,” added Lionel Guérin, co-president, UFIMH.
“The European textile industry represents 1.3 million jobs and 200,000 companies, the vast majority of them SMEs, applying some of the most demanding social and environmental standards in the world,” Mario Jorge Machado, president, Euratex (European Apparel and Textile Confederation).
“They cannot compete with flows of goods that partly escape our rules and our statistics. We are asking for two simple things: that these parcels are declared to customs as precisely as any other goods and that the costs of controls are financed by those who make them necessary,” continued Machado.
The aim of the request is to protect and ensure that extra-EU operators compete under the same rules and compliance requirements as EU companies.
The EU must ensure that every company selling products on the European market is identifiable, accountable, and subject to effective controls, regardless of whether goods enter through individual parcels, bulk shipments, or European warehouses.
A stronger handling fee is an important step in facing a low-cost product invasion, but to be effective, strengthen market surveillance and enact stronger measures to face the customs and logistics costs generated by these flows. In this context, €10 per parcel is a more realistic benchmark than the currently discussed €2–4 range, while the precise level should ultimately reflect the actual costs incurred by public authorities and enforcement systems.
“One year after the Villepinte Declaration, the first concrete steps are in place, but there is no reason to ease the pressure: ultra-fast-fashion platforms are more agile, faster, and often more inventive than our procedures. To restore fair competition, we must keep acting together—as French and European federations, alongside our international partners,” added Olivier Ducatillion, president, UIT (Union des Industries Textiles).