When your shipment moves from one customs area to another, it must go through customs clearance, and, in general, is subject to customs duties and taxes.

The customs zone to which France belongs covers the European Union, so your shipments to other countries of the European Union do not have to be subject to customs clearance.

Customs checks consist of verifying the nature, quantity and value of the goods in order to validate that it can enter the customs zone and estimate the customs duties and taxes that will have to be applied for customs clearance.

To ship goods outside your customs area, you must therefore complete a number of formalities:

• additional documents to attach to the shipment;
• registration with customs to request the allocation of an EORI number if you do not have one;
• ...

Despite the efforts of customs authorities to digitalize procedures and speed up customs clearance, the customs clearance stage can slow the delivery of your package by several days, especially if your documentation is not in order.