EU Parcel Tax Cuts Shein & Temu Volumes 42%, Retail Media Rises

Liège Airport parcels drop 42% after EU parcel tax hits Shein and Temu; brands raise retail media spend despite slowing sales; 80% of European marketplace GMV is cross-border.

Show Notes

The EU's new parcel tax is already reshaping trade flows — Shein and Temu volumes through Liège Airport collapsed 42% in months. Plus: why brands are spending more on retail media even as growth slows.

In this episode:

• Europe's top 100 marketplaces are on track to generate €175.8 billion in GMV this year, with 79.5% of that coming from cross-border transactions — making domestic-only strategies increasingly unviable for European sellers.
• Consumer brands are increasing retail media budgets on platforms like Amazon and Zalando even as overall sales growth softens, raising the question of whether the spend is driving new revenue or simply defending existing shelf position.
• Small parcel volumes through Liège Airport — a key entry point for Shein and Temu shipments — have fallen 42% since the EU's low-value parcel tax launched on July 1st, signalling a structural shift in cross-border ecommerce flows into Europe.

The Digital Commerce Daily is a concise briefing for ecommerce, retail media and digital commerce professionals, hosted by Marco & Klara. New episode every day.

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Your 8-minute briefing on the platforms, players, and profits driving digital commerce today. Hosted by Marco and Klara.

Marco: Three stories for you this morning — and they all have teeth.

Klara: Cross-border commerce in Europe turns out to be bigger than most people realise. Then we're looking at why brands are spending more on retail media even when growth is slowing. And finally, the EU's new parcel tax is already hitting trade volumes — with real numbers to prove it.

Marco: Let's get into it.

Marco: Here's a number that should change how a lot of European sellers are thinking about their business — nearly 80% of all marketplace sales in Europe are cross-border.

Klara: To unpack that — when we talk about marketplaces, we mean platforms like Amazon, Zalando, or eBay where multiple sellers list their products. And cross-border means a buyer in one country purchasing from a seller based in another.

Marco: For a long time, the default assumption for smaller brands was: build your presence in your home market first, then maybe expand. The data suggests that ship has sailed.

Klara: So what does the data actually show? Europe's top 100 marketplaces are expected to generate €175.8 billion in total sales volume this year. Of that, 79.5% comes from transactions crossing national borders. That's not a small slice — that's almost the whole pie.

Marco: What this tells me is that your competition is no longer the German brand or the French brand selling similar things. It's sellers from everywhere — including platforms and sellers from outside Europe entirely. If you're only optimised for your home market, you're already losing ground you might not even know about.

Klara: Though I'd add some nuance here. Knowing that cross-border volume is huge is one thing. Actually being ready for it is another. Localisation — meaning translating your listings, adapting your pricing, handling local returns — takes real investment. Not every small brand has that capacity yet.

Marco: True. But the risk of doing nothing is getting squeezed out by sellers who have done that work. The question isn't whether to go cross-border anymore. It's how fast and how well.

Klara: And whether your logistics — your warehousing and delivery setup — can actually support it without killing your margins.

Marco: The data makes the direction clear. The execution is where brands need to catch up. Next story is coming right up.

Marco: Consumer brands are spending more on retail media ads — even as their actual sales growth is slowing down.

Klara: A bit of context first. Retail media means buying ad space directly on retailer platforms — think sponsored product listings on Amazon, or paid placements on Zalando. For years, brands used this kind of spend as a growth tool — a way to reach new customers and push into new categories.

Marco: What's changed is the direction of travel. Brands are now increasing retail media budgets at the same time their overall revenue growth is softening. That's an unusual combination. You'd normally expect ad budgets to follow sales momentum — up when things are going well, tightened when growth slows.

Klara: So why are brands spending more when growth is weaker? The uncomfortable answer is that a lot of this spend has quietly shifted from being a growth lever to being a survival cost. Brands used to get visibility on these platforms almost automatically — good product, solid reviews, decent sales history. Now that organic visibility is shrinking, and paid placement is how you stay on the digital shelf.

Marco: And that's the harder question brands need to be asking. Is this spend actually driving new sales — or are they just paying to hold the position they used to own for free? There's a real difference between the two, and the numbers often get blurred together.

Klara: I'd push slightly in the other direction though. For brands with real pricing power and strong product ranges, retail media can still be genuinely incremental. It's not automatically a toll booth. The problem is that most brands aren't measuring it clearly enough to know which one they're dealing with.

Marco: Which means the measurement question is now the most important one in the room — not the budget size.

Klara: Before you increase spend, know what you're actually buying.

Marco: Our third story is up next.

Marco: The EU's parcel tax is now showing up in hard numbers — and the scale of the impact is striking.

Klara: A quick bit of background. Until recently, parcels arriving in the EU from outside — particularly from Asian platforms like Shein and Temu — often came in under a threshold that meant they paid little or no import duty. The EU changed that on the first of July, introducing a new tax on low-value parcels coming into Europe.

Marco: And Liège Airport in Belgium is the key location to watch here. It's one of the main entry points for exactly this kind of shipment — high volumes of small, cheap packages from Asian sellers moving into the European market. Since the tax came in, parcel volumes through Liège are down 42%. In roughly three months. That's not a seasonal dip or a short-term wobble — that's a structural collapse in a particular type of trade flow.

Klara: For European brands that have spent years watching Shein and Temu undercut them on price, this is potentially the most significant shift in the competitive landscape in a long time. Those platforms built their advantage partly on being able to land products here cheaply and quickly. That model just got a lot harder.

Marco: My read is straightforward — this is a real tailwind for European sellers. If the volume isn't coming through Liège, those sales either aren't happening at all, or shoppers are going somewhere else. Both outcomes are worth paying attention to.

Klara: Though I'd want to know where those shoppers went. Some will have switched to European alternatives — which is the good news story. But others might just be buying less, or finding different workarounds. A 42% drop in parcels doesn't automatically mean a 42% gain for European brands. Consumer behaviour rarely moves that cleanly.

Marco: Which means European sellers have an opening — but they still have to earn the switch.

Marco: The single biggest idea from today — European ecommerce is being redrawn by regulation and cross-border trade at the same time, and brands that aren't watching both are only seeing half the picture.

Klara: So ask yourself: are you building for the Europe that existed last year, or the one that's taking shape right now?