More than 4 million small parcels from China have arrived at the freight airport in Liege, Belgium, every day since the beginning of the year. On the receiving end, the Belgian customs inspection team at the airport has only 80 members.
Belgium’s top customs official, Kristian Vanderwaeren, said the airport, close to the Netherlands, Germany and France, was built, in part, to cater to e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Shein, Temu and Alibaba.
But the “explosion” in the number of small parcels from China being diverted to Europe since US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House last year was pushing the airport’s capacity to its limit, he said.
An executive order signed by Trump on February 1 last year removed the “de minimis” exemption that allowed Chinese packages worth less than US$800 to enter the United States duty free.
Vanderwaeren said the situation in Liege had further deteriorated after Italy and France introduced their own handling fees for small parcels this year, because more parcels were now being redirected to the Belgian airport to avoid those charges.
While the proposed fees have been a source of tension between Brussels and Beijing, Vanderwaeren said the core of the problem lay elsewhere – with the quality of the parcels rather than their quantity. He said the solution was for both sides to work together to ensure Chinese products met European standards before they reached the continent.
“The problem for me, as a customs officer, is not so much the quantity,” he said. “The problem is that we’re being flooded with Chinese products that … do not meet European standards, whose value is not properly declared.”
Vanderwaeren said 30 per cent of the small parcels inspected were in violation of EU standards, while for certain goods, such as cosmetic products, the infringement rate was 100 per cent.
Belgian customs are at their wits’ end – they are now issuing fines very swiftly
