Selling to 27 EU markets from one import

A company from outside the EU can reach all 27 member states from one import. It lands its stock once, at wholesale level, and ships each order from inside the EU. The alternative, clearing customs on every parcel, makes the cost of importing grow with every order.

Suppose a hardware brand clears customs on every order it sells into Europe. Each parcel crosses the border alone, with its own declaration, its own charges, and its own chance of being pulled aside for inspection. The more the company sells, the more it pays to import its own sales, one parcel at a time.

Per-parcel imports or one landing?

Selling into the EU from outside it means your goods are imports. They enter EU customs territory, and someone has to declare them, pay what is owed, and answer for the file if questions come later. There is no way around that. The real choice is how often you do it.

The per-order road treats every sale as its own import. It is easy to start and expensive to scale, because the cost is multiplied by the order count. Double your sales and you double your clearance events, your paperwork, and your exposure to whatever is happening at the border that week.

That road now carries a published surcharge. From 1 July 2026 until 1 July 2028, Regulation (EU) 2026/382 applies a customs duty of EUR 3 per item. The duty covers distance-sale consignments of EUR 150 or less. Per item means one charge per tariff classification in the parcel, not one per parcel, so a mixed order pays it more than once. How that works on a real declaration is in EUR 3 customs duty: per item, not per parcel.

What landing once at wholesale level means

The alternative is to cross the border once, deliberately, at stock level. One consolidated shipment enters the EU. The usual route is to release it for free circulation on arrival. Duty and import VAT are settled once, on the whole shipment, and from then on the stock moves like European goods. Higher-value goods that move in smaller volumes can instead go into a bonded customs warehouse under Article 240 of the Union Customs Code. Duty and import VAT are suspended until each release, and each release is its own tax point. The numbers behind that choice are in bonded or release on arrival, in numbers.

One role has to be settled before that intake can move. Every import needs an importer of record: the legal party named on the declaration. That party owes the customs debt under Article 77 of the Union Customs Code. For a company with no EU entity, this role is the wall. Someone established in the Union has to put their name on the line. In the one-landing model it is settled once, at intake, for the whole stock, instead of being improvised parcel by parcel.

From that point the geography flips. An order to a customer in any of the twenty-seven member states ships from stock already inside the single market. That means a local courier label, no customs stop and no per-parcel file. VAT on the sales themselves is still owed in each buyer’s country. For a seller from outside the EU that applies from the first euro. The One Stop Shop reports that VAT through one registration instead of twenty-seven.

The two cost curves are the whole argument. The per-order model carries a cost that grows with every order. The one-landing model carries a cost that is spread: the same intake work serves every order that ships out of it.

How this runs at EFC

EFC runs its base in Portugal as one operation with Warelog. The team that receives a wholesale intake and files the declaration also picks, packs and dispatches the single orders that leave it. The same team receives the returns that come back. A clearance question is answered by the desk holding the stock, not passed along a chain of subcontractors.

The model is about the border, not the product. The same stock logic serves electronics, consumer goods and industrial products.

What this model does not do

It does not delete tax. Duty and import VAT are paid on release, on arrival or, from a customs warehouse, at each later release. VAT on sales remains due in every country you sell to. What changes is the shape of the cost and who carries the paperwork.

It does not replace product compliance. A consumer product still falls under the General Product Safety Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/988. It still needs an EU Responsible Person, the named EU contact for product safety, a role that exists for consumer products only. Regulated categories carry their own sector rules on top, and roles such as a medical-device authorised representative are separate appointments outside this model.

And it is an infrastructure decision. One landing pays back through the orders that flow across it. A brand still testing whether Europe wants its product may reasonably stay on the per-parcel road a little longer, with the 2026 duty priced in.

The same model is walked end to end, from intake to returns, on the operating base in Europe.