I think the Dutch government committed a massive own-goal: the problem is that there's too many small, personal orders from China relative to Customs' processing capacity, so they're imposing a 2-euro-per-item processing fee. But:

a) it's per item on the package label, not per package, which doesn't incentivize bundling multiple items into one package to reduce waste etc etc;

b) it was originally meant to go into effect in 2028, but they suddenly decided to accelerate this. To January 2026. Announced in late November 2025. Meaning that anyone who had orders on the mind was incentivized to order them immediately, in December, the busiest time of the year for packages.

@0xabad1dea Isn't this an EU thing? I read about the same thing in Hungary maybe a week ago.

@buherator I believe there are discussions about potentially making this EU-wide but it's currently a few countries implementing roughly the same idea at roughly the same time.

@0xabad1dea

> a massive own-goal

I think that's a Denglish thing... I think the English expression is "self-own"? Congrats on becoming Dutch by the way 😃

@dascandy @0xabad1dea Modern US/internet English seems to favour self-own. Own-goal is still very much British English :)

@patrizia @0xabad1dea TIL, thanks!

@patrizia @dascandy as an American: I only understand "self-own" through the lens of hacking/online gaming culture, whereas "own-goal" is a bog standard sports metaphor that the Reference Thanksgiving Uncle would grasp perfectly.

@0xabad1dea @patrizia I guess that reveals where I learned most of my English. I really thought it was a mostly Dutch cultural thing.

@0xabad1dea Delayed again until at least February 2026.

@Sikorsky78 did they realize their mistake already? do you know a source? I can only find things saying "beginning in January, which everyone says is too soon and will cause problems"

@0xabad1dea https://open.overheid.nl/documenten/76843d45-6db8-47c9-91f1-fd5a7c0dcf33/file
Official letter.

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/242654/nederland-en-belgie-stellen-toeslag-chinese-pakketjes-uit-tot-minimaal-februari.html

News article.

Could only find local language sources.