You spent the summer getting your head around the EU’s new €3 customs duty. Now there’s a second deadline headed your way, and unlike the duty, this one doesn’t care how small your order is.
Starting November 1, every B2C shipment to the EU, regardless of value, must include three product identifiers for each item. Miss one, and customs can hold, delay, or reject the shipment. Here’s what’s required, why product catalogs are the most common point of failure, and how to get ahead of the EU customs product identifier (PID) requirements before they become mandatory.
What the EU customs PID requirements mean for your shipments
On July 1, the EU ended its de minimis threshold and introduced a flat €3 duty on low-value B2C shipments. That change was about money. This one is about data.
From November 1, EU customs requires PIDs on every item in a business-to-consumer (B2C) shipment headed into the EU. It doesn’t matter if the parcel is worth 10 euros or 10,000. If a consumer is the end recipient, the products inside need to be individually identifiable.
This is the part of the EU customs PID requirements that catches people off guard. The €3 duty only applies below €150. The PID mandate doesn’t have a ceiling.
The three PIDs you’ll need
Customs is asking for three separate pieces of product data, and each one does a different job:
M-PID (Merchant Product ID). Your own internal identifier, typically a SKU. You already have this for most of your catalog.
NS-PID (Non-Standardized Manufacturer Product ID). The manufacturer’s own model or part number. If you don’t have one on file, this is the identifier most sellers are missing, and it means a call to your supplier.
S-PID (Standardized Product ID). An internationally recognized code: GTIN, EAN, UPC, or ISBN.
Together, these three numbers tell customs authorities exactly what’s moving through the border, down to the specific product, not just the product category.
Why PID requirements trip up most catalogs
Most product catalogs weren’t built with this level of detail in mind, and that’s where the EU customs PID requirements get harder than they sound on paper.
The identifiers have to live at the variant level. A t-shirt in three colors and four sizes is 12 distinct products to customs, and each one needs its own set of PIDs. A single identifier applied to the whole style, or a batch or lot code applied at the warehouse level, won’t clear. Customs is explicit on this point: batch-level and lot-level identifiers get rejected.
For sellers with large or fast-moving catalogs, that’s a real audit, not a quick form fill. And the manufacturer piece, the NS-PID, often means reaching out to suppliers who haven’t been asked for this information before. That conversation takes longer than the rest of the setup combined, so it’s worth starting now rather than in late October.
You can test now, and you should
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to wait for November 1 to find out if your setup works.
PIDs have been acceptable on a voluntary basis since July 1, with no penalty for shipping without them before the deadline. That means you can enter and test your product data today, catch gaps in your catalog, and fix them before there’s anything riding on it.
If you ship into the EU regularly, this is the window to use. Export your product catalog, fill in the missing PID fields, and run a handful of real shipments through the process before the requirement is enforced.
Duties, PIDs, and the DDP decision
The PID mandate doesn’t replace the duty question from July, it sits on top of it. And together, they make a strong case for revisiting how you handle costs at the EU border.
When you ship internationally, you decide who pays duties at delivery: you, through Delivered Duty Paid (DDP), or your customer, through Delivered Duty Unpaid (DDU). Not sure which setup fits your business? Our DDP vs. DDU guide breaks down the tradeoffs. DDU means your EU customers get hit with a charge request before they can collect their package. With a duty now applied to nearly every B2C shipment, that friction shows up more often. Some of those packages come back to you as refused deliveries.
DDP keeps the experience clean. You build the cost into your pricing up front, and your customer never sees a surprise charge. ShipStation’s Guaranteed Prepaid Duties and Taxes makes this easier to offer: as long as your shipment data, including your PIDs, is accurate, the duties and fees you quote are locked in, with no adjustments after the fact. That’s one more reason accurate product data is worth getting right now, not after the first wave of November complaints.
One more thing worth flagging: a few related details are still being finalized on the EU’s end, and this guidance will be updated once those are confirmed.
How to get ready before November 1
A few weeks is enough time if you start now.
Audit your product catalog. Identify every EU-bound product missing an M-PID, NS-PID, or S-PID, and check that identifiers are assigned per variant, not per style.
Contact your manufacturers for missing NS-PIDs. This is the step with the longest lead time. Start these conversations first.
Use bulk export and import, not manual entry. If you’re managing more than a handful of SKUs, export your product list, fill in the PID columns, and import it back rather than editing products one at a time.
Decide on DDP before the deadline, not after. If you’re not already prepaying duties for EU orders, evaluate it now while you have time to set it up properly.
Check in with your carrier. Carriers are each rolling out PID transmission on their own timeline, so confirm what your specific carrier needs and by when.
The sellers who treat this as a data project, not a last-minute form to fill out, are the ones best positioned to clear customs smoothly on November 1. Everyone else will be doing this same audit under a lot more pressure.
Get your EU shipments ready for what’s next. Start with ShipStation today.
Disclaimer: This is not legal or tax advice and is not a guarantee of customs clearance outcomes, duty amounts, or fees. Please consult your advisors for guidance specific to your business.
