The EU introduced a temporary EUR 3 fee in July on each tariff item in shipments from outside the bloc valued at up to EUR 150.
The fee has quickly affected Chinese shopping platforms such as Temu and AliExpress, the Puls Biznesu newspaper reported, citing Mediapanel data, a key benchmark for analyzing the online market in Poland.
Temu, the largest platform of its kind, lost more than 20 percent of its Polish users between June and July, according to the data.
The platform had 16.68 million users in June, compared with 13.6 million in July.
AliExpress recorded a decline of more than 15 percent, from 9.98 million users in June to 8.43 million in July, the newspaper reported.
Poland is one of the first EU markets where the impact of the new fee can be seen in user data, Sebastian Błaszkiewicz, a senior executive at the Digital Economy Chamber, a Polish business organization representing e-commerce and digital technology companies, told Puls Biznesu.
He said Poland has a system that most other EU countries lack for quickly and precisely measuring internet traffic.
Mediapanel makes it possible to assess the impact of the new fees in actual user numbers just one month after their introduction, he said.
Similar trends have been reported elsewhere in the EU, although the data are not directly comparable.
In Austria, the number of shipments from Chinese platforms fell by almost 50 percent in the first two weeks of July, while in France the Temu app fell from third to ninth place in app rankings after the new rules took effect, according to Puls Biznesu.
The EUR 3 fee is temporary and is due to remain in place until July 1, 2028.
It will then be replaced by a permanent customs system with rates varying according to the type of product.
The temporary measure gives Chinese shopping platforms time to adjust their logistics operations, including by moving more inventory to warehouses within the EU, Puls Biznesu reported.
(nj/gs)
Source: PAP