A new EU-wide customs duty of €3 on all imported parcels valued below €150 comes into effect on 1 July, ending a long-standing exemption that fuelled a surge in low-cost e-commerce shipments, mainly from China. In Italy, the impact doubles to €5 per package as a €2 national surcharge – introduced via the budget law – kicks in simultaneously, barring an eleventh-hour reprieve. Swedish consumer authorities warn that even orders placed before the deadline but arriving after 30 June will attract the fee, and they emphasise that the charge is applied per product category, so a single package containing, say, a shirt and a pair of shoes triggers a €6 levy.

The measure is a direct response to the overwhelming volume of small consignments that, European regulators argue, often bypass safety, chemical and intellectual-property standards. Platforms such as Temu and Shein have built their cross-border model on the duty-free threshold. Italy’s customs agency reported that in 2025, 98% of its 396 million non-EU parcels originated in China, with clothing accounting for 25% of them. Industry voices in Rome are alarmed: logistics federation Confetra calculates the national surcharge could halve freight volumes and cost the state €25 million in lost revenues, and has urged Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti to abolish it outright. In Stockholm, consumer-rights experts support the move as a tool to curb frivolous orders and returns, noting that consumers will now bear the cost of their own “sloppy ordering.”

Tokyo, meanwhile, has approved its first revision of visa fees since 1978. From July 2026, a single-entry visa will rise from ¥3,000 to ¥15,000, and a multiple-entry visa from ¥6,000 to ¥30,000. The foreign ministry cites decades of inflation and currency fluctuation to explain the fivefold increase, and insists it does not expect an immediate hit to inbound tourism. The extra revenue will be directed towards managing a foreign-resident population that reached a record 4.13 million in late 2025, as well as expanding Japanese-language education and enforcing residency rules. Viewed from Tehran, the recalibration of government fees and subsidies takes a different form: the administration has phased out a preferential exchange rate for essential food imports and replaced it with direct electronic coupons (kala-berk), crediting 10 million rials per person. The reform aims to eliminate rent-seeking along the import chain, though it has contributed to price rises for poultry, dairy and meat, exacerbated by wartime freight costs that tripled container rates from India to Iran.

Iran’s welfare ministry opposes any broad removal of middle-income deciles from the scheme and suggests only those with assets above certain thresholds – cars worth more than 50 billion rials or properties over 500 billion rials – might be excluded. Wheat production is forecast at 13.5–14 million tonnes, enough to cover domestic bread demand without imports. The immediate milestone to monitor is whether Italy’s government will postpone its €2 surcharge for a second time, as it did in March citing IT system upgrades, or let it stand and watch the effects on the logistics sector. The EU-wide duty, however, is now locked in, marking a structural shift in the cost of cross-border online shopping for hundreds of millions of consumers.