European postal services suspend parcel deliveries to the US

New tariffs cause mayhem

Several European postal services will suspend parcel shipments from their countries to the United States as of August 25, with the exception of gifts between individuals of less than 100 euros, due to the recent tightening of American customs rules.

In a statement, France’s La Poste said it had no choice due to “incomplete specifications and technical modalities and the extremely short time to prepare".

Other European national posts have taken the same measure: "For example, BPost (the Belgian post), Correos (the Spanish post), PostNord (the Swedish-Danish network), Deutsche Post (the German post), and Austrian Post (the Austrian post) have already announced the interruption of postal parcel shipments to the United States," La Poste said in its statement.

US following "a different approach"

On 19 August, PostEurop, the body that brings together the 51 European postal players, had already warned in a press release about this risk of suspension at the European level. The new US regulations follow a different approach from those provided globally by the Universal Postal Union.

Every year, France’s La Poste sends an average of 1.6 million parcels across the Atlantic, 80% of which come from companies and 20% from individuals.  

At the end of July, the Trump administration announced that it would end the exemption from taxes on small parcels entering the United States as of August 29. Washington will tax postal deliveries - worth less than 800 euros - at the same level as other products from the EU, i.e. at 15%, according to the trade agreement reached at the end of July.

It was not announced how long the disruption will last.

(Michael Leahy. Source: TF1 et al. Photo: Jean Fourche / Pexels)