The European Commission (EC) is drawing up a plan to impose duties on cheap Chinese goods bought from Chinese online retailers such as Temu and Shein. This is an attempt to stop the rise of what the EU considers to be substandard items from China.
These actions do not come by chance, as more and more sectors are complaining about Chinese manufacturers undercutting businesses, producing and supplying goods at lower prices than European ones and thus hindering European business development.
Later this month, the European Commission will propose removing the current €150 threshold below which no duty is paid on supplies from China, the Financial Times reports.
The commission's main targets are online trading platforms Temu and AliExpress, as well as clothing sales platform Shein, according to an official quoted in the Financial Times.
According to the Commission, 2.3 billion items below the €150 duty-free threshold were imported into the EU last year. E-commerce imports more than doubled year-on-year, reaching 350 thousand items in April - or almost two shipments per household, according to the commission. China benefits from subsidised postage costs, meaning it is cost-effective to send cheap goods by air. The provisions will apply to all online retailers that send goods to EU customers directly from outside the bloc. US company Amazon, for example, typically uses sellers based in Europe.
Another possible measure is to make it compulsory to register for online VAT payments on major platforms regardless of value.