Selling to the EU from China

No. There is no free trade agreement, so your goods pay the ordinary Common Customs Tariff rate, and a significant number of Chinese-origin goods additionally carry anti-dumping duties. Both the rate and the anti-dumping measure are decided by the customs code, which is why the classification is worth checking before the first shipment rather than after.

Yes. If you sell to EU consumers from outside the EU, the Responsible Person cannot be you and cannot be your Chinese company; it must be an economic operator established in the EU. Most sellers from China appoint a paid Responsible Person service for this.

Most likely because no valid EU Responsible Person is recorded against the listing. Amazon, Kaufland and other marketplaces have been enforcing this since 2025 and suspend listings that lack it; regardless of whether the product itself is safe. What the marketplace checks is the listing data, not your paperwork.

No: that is the most common mistake. A CE marking says something about conformity; it says nothing about whether a Responsible Person exists with a reachable EU address. They are two separate requirements, and marketplaces check both.

The name and contact address of both the manufacturer and the Responsible Person, plus something that identifies the specific product; a type, batch or serial number. Warnings and safety information must be in the language of every country you sell into. A Chinese-only label is not compliant, however good the product is.

The Responsible Person holds the technical file and it must be kept for ten years. In practice the seller from China provides the documents (from the factory) and the Responsible Person service holds them and answers when an EU authority asks.

Yes. Selling to EU consumers through any marketplace is distance selling into the EU, whatever the platform. The responsible-person duty applies and the marketplace checks the listing data; the platform being Chinese changes nothing about the EU side.

No: per-order shipping is still selling to EU consumers from outside the EU. You still need a Responsible Person with a physical EU address, documentation held for ten years, and labelling in the right languages; per product, from every supplier you use. Dropshipping does not create an exception; it multiplies the paperwork.

In Seller Central: Performance → Account Health → Manage Your Compliance → Add compliance information. You upload the responsible person, the manufacturer details and the warning and safety information there. You must do this again for every EU store you sell in: Amazon requires the information per store, even when the responsible person is the same for all of them, and the warning and safety text has to be in that country's language. One Responsible Person covers the whole EU legally; Amazon still wants the upload per marketplace.

Yes. TikTok Shop sellers enter the responsible person and manufacturer in the seller-centre qualification section; Temu enforces GPSR across product qualification, labels and packaging. Both have applied since 13 December 2024, and non-compliant listings are blocked or delisted.

Honest answer first: this page cannot tell you, and any page that claims to is guessing. Anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties are imposed per product on a CN or TARIC code of 8 or 10 digits, sometimes with a different rate per named exporter, and they change during the year. What you can do is look it up: enter your full code and China as the country of origin in the Commission's TARIC consultation, and any measure in force is shown next to the ordinary rate. Three things worth knowing before you do. The duty is collected from the EU importer on release for free circulation, on top of the normal rate. Measures can be extended to parts and to goods routed through a third country under an anti-circumvention investigation, so shipping via another country is not an answer. And imports can be registered during an investigation, which lets a later definitive duty be collected back to the date of registration.

The obligation sits with the authorised CBAM declarant, not with you, but the data has to come from you. That declarant is the importer established in a member state; where the importer is established outside the EU it is his indirect customs representative. The definitive regime applies from 1 January 2026.

Threshold. He is exempt for as long as the net mass he imports in a calendar year, added up over iron and steel, aluminium, cement and fertilisers, does not pass 50 tonnes (Article 2a, with the figure in Annex VII, point 1). Once he passes it in a calendar year, the obligations apply to the embedded emissions of that whole year. The threshold counts per importer, not per shipment and not per supplier. It does not apply to hydrogen or to electricity (Article 2a(4)): for those he is in scope from the first consignment, however small.

Authorisation. The goods may only be released for free circulation by an authorised CBAM declarant, or by his indirect customs representative (Article 4; application under Article 5). Transitional rule: where the application is submitted by 31 March 2026, he may keep importing during 2026 for as long as the competent authority has not decided. If it is refused afterwards, a penalty follows on the emissions imported in the meantime.

Certificates. There are no CBAM certificates on sale in 2026. Sales start on 1 February 2027 (Article 20(1)). For import year 2026 the CBAM declaration is filed and the certificates are surrendered by 30 September 2027 (Article 22). The cost counts in his margin from 2026, but the cash leaves in 2027.

What he will ask you for. Which goods are in scope is decided by the CN code in Annex I: cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen. For those he chooses how the embedded emissions are determined: from the actual emissions of the installation, or from default values (Article 7(2)). He is not required to ask you first, and not required to show that actual data cannot be obtained. It is a cost calculation, not a penalty. Default values are set at the average emission intensity of the exporting country, raised by a mark-up fixed in implementing acts; where reliable data for the exporting country is missing, the average emission intensity of the ten exporting countries with the highest emission intensity is used instead. Against that, only actual emissions have to be checked by an accredited verifier (Article 8(1)), so working from default values saves him that verification. Your figures are worth buying when your installation is cleaner than the country average plus mark-up by more than the verification costs; for an installation dirtier than that average, the default value can be the better deal for him.

Companies that act as your Responsible Person in the EU for an annual fee, including for sellers who stay outside the EU entirely. The provider list on the main page says who they are and what each covers; editorial and unpaid. Or ask us to introduce you to three.