French postal service suspends parcel deliveries to the United States
Temporary measure required to let La Poste adapt to new ‘Trump tariff’ customs duties
La Poste says the suspension is temporary and that it is seeking technical solutions to resume deliveries
Antonin Albert / Shutterstock
La Poste will suspend most parcel deliveries to the United States from Monday, August 25, in order to adapt to the requirements introduced by the new US customs duties.
The new customs duties starting on August 29 apply due to the end of long-standing exemptions on low-value imports from the European Union, announced in late July.
Once the duties come into effect, all goods entering the United States, including postal consignments previously exempt up to $800, will be subject to customs duties of at least 15%.
In the US system, it is the recipient who pays customs duties and taxes before the parcel is released by US Customs and Border Protection, however the new rules could require senders to pay this.
Announcing the suspension of its deliveries to the US, the French postal service said the move was unavoidable.
In a statement on August 22, La Poste said it was “constrained” to halt deliveries, citing the “extremely short time frame” given to adapt to the new system.
The US Customs and Border Protection service only published technical specifications on August 15, leaving little time to develop the necessary IT tools.
Only one exemption remains. “Parcels sent as gifts between individuals with a declared value of less than €100 will not be affected,” La Poste confirmed.
Express operator Chronopost is also unaffected, as its operations are not subject to postal customs clearance rules.
La Poste says the suspension is temporary and that it is seeking technical solutions to resume deliveries.
Customers requiring further information can contact La Poste via 3631 for individuals and 3634 for businesses.
Adapting IT for US deliveries
La Poste handles on average 1.6 million parcels a year to the United States, most of them under the former $800 threshold.
Jean-Paul Forceville, the group’s director of international relations, told La Tribune: “It is urgent to clarify the new requirements of the US customs authorities in order to develop the IT processes and deploy them across postal networks.”
The decision of the French postal service follows similar moves by its European counterparts.
Deutsche Post in Germany and Bpost in Belgium confirmed similar suspensions this week, with postal services in Spain, Austria and the Nordic countries also applying restrictions.
The issue has been raised at European level by PostEurop, which represents 51 national postal operators.
The organisation warned that “the new regulation will have significant consequences for all postal companies worldwide and their customers sending items through postal networks”.
Botond Szebeny, secretary general of PostEurop, told La Tribune that in addition to the regulatory uncertainty, postal operators risked being exposed to a “financial burden that did not exist before”.
He underlined that parcels valued below $800 made up the vast majority of traffic to the US.
PostEurop also noted that “critical details have not yet been clearly defined”.
