EU sets the Union handling fee at EUR 2 per item from 1 November 2026 (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/2152)

What changed in detail

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/2152 of 21 September 2026 is now in the Official Journal of the European Union (L series, 22 October 2026). It supplements Regulation (EU) 2026/2108, the new Union Customs Code, by setting the amount of the Union handling fee.

Article 1 sets the fee laid down in Article 20(2) of Regulation (EU) 2026/2108 at EUR 2 per item. The fee applies to the handling of a request to place goods under the release for free circulation procedure where those goods are sold in distance sales to a customer in the customs territory of the Union, including the special fiscal territories.

Under Article 2 the regulation entered into force on the day of its publication, 22 October 2026, and applies from 1 November 2026.

This record supersedes eu-union-handling-fee-vat-taxable-amount-2026, which reported the delegated act (C(2026) 6694) as adopted by the Commission but not yet published, and so recorded it as proposed. Publication in the Official Journal makes the EUR 2 amount and the 1 November 2026 start date law.

What it means

The fee is no longer a draft figure: from 1 November 2026 every item in a distance sale released into free circulation carries EUR 2. Sellers and platforms should build it into landed-cost and checkout pricing now. The Commission’s guidance treats the fee as part of the VAT taxable amount, so the VAT logic set out in the superseded record still matters; what has changed is that the amount and the date are now fixed by the regulation itself rather than expected.