PARIS — Europe’s battle with ultra-cheap fast fashion is escalating, and Shein is increasingly finding itself at the center of a regulatory squeeze that threatens one of the key advantages behind its global rise: getting inexpensive products directly to shoppers at extraordinary speed.
European textile and apparel industry group EURATEX is urging the European Union to introduce a handling fee of around €10 on low-value e-commerce parcels entering the bloc, arguing that Europe’s existing measures do not go far enough to cover the cost of inspecting billions of imported packages and enforcing product-safety rules.
The proposed €10 charge has not been adopted by the European Union. It is an industry recommendation aimed at influencing the EU’s developing customs framework. EURATEX says a fee at roughly that level would better reflect the resources customs authorities need to process declarations, assess risks and identify unsafe or non-compliant products.
The proposal represents another potential challenge for China-founded, Singapore-headquartered fast-fashion giant Shein, as well as other international e-commerce platforms that have built their businesses around shipping inexpensive goods directly to European consumers.
And the timing could hardly be more significant.
Europe Has Already Started Closing the Cheap-Parcel Loophole
Since July 1, 2026, the European Union has imposed a temporary €3 customs duty on low-value e-commerce imports worth up to €150, ending the previous customs-duty exemption for such shipments.
The European Commission says the €3 duty is temporary and is expected to apply until July 2028, when the EU’s broader customs reforms are scheduled to introduce normal tariff treatment through a new customs data system. The duty is calculated according to different tariff categories contained in a shipment rather than simply charging €3 for every individual physical product.
EURATEX believes that is only the beginning.
The organization argues that a separate handling charge is necessary because each incoming package creates costs for customs authorities, from data processing and risk assessment to checking whether products comply with European safety rules.
Its position reflects a much broader concern across Europe: the enormous volume of inexpensive products arriving directly from overseas e-commerce sellers.
According to the Council of the European Union, around 4.6 billion small packages entered the EU in 2024, with approximately 91% coming from China. The European Commission says low-value e-commerce imports grew further to nearly 5.9 billion items in 2025.
For European manufacturers, those numbers have become impossible to ignore.
Europe’s Textile Industry Says the Playing Field Isn’t Level
Europe’s textile and clothing industry remains a major economic sector, generating roughly €166 billion in annual turnover and supporting around 1.2 million jobs across nearly 200,000 companies, according to EURATEX’s latest industry figures.
But the organization says European producers are competing against imported products that can arrive at extremely low prices while domestic manufacturers shoulder significantly higher environmental, labor, product-safety and regulatory compliance costs.
EURATEX estimates that imports into the European textile and clothing market are now worth about €122 billion, more than double the sector’s €61 billion in exports, while roughly one-third of textile and clothing products sold in Europe are manufactured in China.
That is why the organization is asking policymakers not only to impose a meaningful handling fee but also to close potential loopholes.
One concern is that overseas platforms could increasingly move inventory in bulk into European warehouses rather than sending individual parcels directly from Asia, potentially changing how future charges affect their business.
EURATEX says any new system should ensure comparable treatment regardless of the logistics route used.
France Is Going Even Further
While Brussels works on EU-wide customs reforms, France has already launched one of Europe’s toughest measures against ultra-fast fashion.
A French environmental penalty took effect on September 1, 2026, targeting products associated with ultra-fast-fashion business models.
Under France’s new system, penalties in 2026 can reach up to €12 per product, subject to a limit of 50% of the item’s pre-tax sale price. The maximum penalty is scheduled to rise over the coming years, reaching nearly €20 per product by 2030.
The French government says the policy is designed to discourage business models based on extremely large product ranges, rapid turnover and products that offer little incentive for repair.
France is also moving beyond financial penalties. Beginning in January 2027, French law will prohibit paid or unpaid influencer promotion of brands and products classified under the country’s ultra-fast-fashion definition, with violations potentially attracting administrative fines.
For companies dependent on aggressive digital marketing and continuously changing inventories, that could prove almost as significant as import fees themselves.
Shein Is Already Feeling the Pressure
The regulatory crackdown comes at an awkward moment for Shein.
After years of speculation over public listings in New York and London, the company finally made its stock-market debut in Hong Kong on September 1, 2026.
Shein raised roughly US$1.7 billion, valuing the company at around US$26.5 billion — dramatically below the nearly US$100 billion valuation it commanded in private markets in 2022.
Its shares fell as much as 10% during their first trading session before recovering most of those losses, then declined more than 5% on their second day of trading.
Investors have several reasons to be cautious.
Shein is facing higher import costs in major Western markets, regulatory investigations, slower growth and increasing questions over whether its famously inexpensive cross-border supply-chain model can maintain the same profitability under tougher trade rules.
Reuters reported that Shein’s first-quarter revenue growth in 2026 slowed to around 1%, while regulatory and tariff changes in both Europe and the United States have put additional pressure on margins.
Yet Europe remains enormously important to the company.
CNA reported that Shein reached about 156 million average monthly users in Europe by the end of 2025, putting the platform among the continent’s largest e-commerce services.
That audience gives Shein tremendous scale — but it also makes European regulation increasingly difficult for the company to ignore.
Shein Also Faces an Ongoing EU Consumer Investigation
Customs charges are only one part of the pressure.
European consumer authorities are continuing an investigation into Shein over practices they say may violate EU consumer-protection rules.
The European Commission says authorities have raised concerns involving alleged fake discounts, pressure-selling techniques, misleading sustainability claims, incomplete information regarding returns and refunds, deceptive product labels and difficulties contacting the company.
The investigation remains ongoing.
That distinction matters: these are regulatory concerns and allegations being examined by European authorities, not final findings covering every issue under investigation.
The Bigger Battle Is Over Fast Fashion’s Business Model
The argument surrounding a €10 handling fee is therefore about far more than customs paperwork.
Europe is effectively questioning whether a retail model built around extraordinarily cheap products, huge online catalogues and millions of individually shipped packages should continue receiving the same economic advantages it enjoyed during the explosive growth of cross-border e-commerce.
For European manufacturers, the issue is competitiveness.
For regulators, it is increasingly about customs enforcement, consumer safety and environmental costs.
And for shoppers, the most visible consequence may eventually be simple: those €5 shirts, €8 dresses and other ultra-cheap online purchases may no longer stay quite so cheap.
Whether Brussels ultimately chooses something close to EURATEX’s proposed €10 handling fee remains uncertain.
But the direction of travel is becoming much clearer.
Europe has already eliminated its low-value customs exemption. France has introduced penalties targeting ultra-fast fashion. Consumer regulators are scrutinizing major platforms. And a broader EU handling fee is already part of Europe’s customs-reform agenda.
For Shein, the bigger question is no longer whether European regulation will affect its business.
It is how expensive that regulation will eventually become — and whether the ultra-low prices that made Shein a global phenomenon can survive it.
WWC ONE MEDIA MJE
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