Since 1 November 2026, every low-value parcel sold to an EU consumer from outside the EU needs product identifiers in its customs data. According to BDO Belgium, product identifiers (PIDs) are now mandatory for B2C distance sales with an intrinsic value up to €150.
This comes on top of an earlier change. The duty exemption for distance-sale consignments up to €150 already ended on 1 July 2026 (BDO Belgium). A €2 handling fee is also expected, although the sources disagree on how settled it is.
The timing is tight. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are only weeks away, and a parcel held or sent back at the border in late November costs you the margin on that order, the return shipping, and quite possibly the customer.
What changed on 1 November
Declarants must now provide three product identifiers for every item in a parcel. From 1 July 2026 these identifiers were optional, with no penalty for leaving them out. From 1 November, missing or incorrect identifiers count as a failure to provide complete and accurate data, as Customssupport.com explains. The requirement comes from amendments to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/2446.
In practice, the data has to exist somewhere before the label is printed. If your product records are thin, with a title, a price and a weight and little else, your customs declarations will be thin too. That is the gap to close.
The rules are aimed at sellers shipping into the EU from third countries. If you run an EU-based shop that buys from non-EU suppliers or sells through marketplaces that ship from outside the EU, you will still feel this through higher landed costs and slower deliveries on those items.
The sources I found do not agree on a single published list of the three identifiers, so I will not guess here. Get the exact list from your customs broker or the European Commission's customs pages before you start editing product data.
The €2 handling fee: confirm it before you quote it
BDO Belgium states that a €2 handling fee applies to all distance sales from third countries from 1 November. Customssupport.com describes the €2 Union handling fee as only expected from that date, on top of any duty.
That difference matters if you are about to print it on a checkout page. Before you change prices or shipping terms, your carrier or broker should be able to tell you:
- Whether the fee is being charged today, and from which date it appears on invoices.
- Whether it is counted per item, per parcel or per declaration.
- Whether they pass it on to you, to your customer at delivery, or absorb it.
The answer to the last point decides whether you raise prices, add a line at checkout, or accept a thinner margin on EU orders. Your customer should never meet a surprise charge at the door during the holiday rush.
If you sell through Shopify or a marketplace
A third-party guide from Common Thread Co reports that Shopify announced the requirement on 24 October 2026. It says merchants buying labels through Shopify Shipping or Managed Markets must update product data before 1 November, and that parcels without all three identifiers may be rejected at customs and returned.
The same article also says Shopify handles this automatically. It contradicts itself, and it is not Shopify's own announcement. Treat it as a reason to check your setup yourself. Open your Shopify admin, look at which customs fields each product carries, and read Shopify's own help documentation on EU shipments. If you sell on other marketplaces, ask their seller support the same question in writing.
The safe assumption is that the platform passes along whatever data you give it. If a field is empty in your catalogue, it will be empty on the declaration.
A bigger shift is coming in 2027
This is the first step in a longer reform. Under the Union Customs Code, Regulation (EU) 2026/2108, the seller or platform is named as importer for distance sales from 21 September 2027 (Article 5(14)), according to Customssupport.com. Sellers who sell independently into the EU will carry direct importer responsibility.
That means the product data you fix now becomes your own legal record later. Getting it into a clean, central place this month saves you doing the work twice.
What to do this week
- Audit your EU-bound SKUs. Export every product you ship to EU consumers and mark which ones are missing any of the three required identifiers. Confirm the exact list with your broker first.
- Fix data at the source. Add identifiers in your store admin, ERP or product information system so every label pulls them automatically. Avoid patching values by hand at the label stage, where mistakes multiply during peak weeks.
- Test a real shipment. Create a test order to an EU address through Shopify Shipping, Managed Markets or your marketplace, and inspect the customs data that goes out with the label.
- Email your carrier or customs broker. Ask how the €2 handling fee is charged and passed on, and what happens to a parcel rejected for incomplete data: who pays the return and how fast you are told.
- Update pricing and policies. Build duty, which has applied since July, and the handling fee into EU prices or shipping rates. Update your shipping policy page so customers know what to expect.
None of this is complicated, but it is detailed work, and it is much easier to do in early November than in the middle of Cyber Monday. Clean product data protects your delivery times now and prepares you for the importer rules in 2027. If you want help connecting your catalogue, store and carrier so customs data flows through without manual retyping, Stolos sets this up for businesses like yours.