What happens to a parcel at the border

The European Union is a single customs territory. A parcel posted in the Netherlands and delivered in Germany therefore crosses no customs border: there is no import declaration, no duty, and no import VAT. For carriage it is no different from a domestic parcel. The Commission's customs pages set out what the union covers.

That is the whole of that point, and offers occasionally make more of it than it is worth. Inside the union the customs question is not a question. It also says nothing about whether the goods may lawfully be supplied, which is a separate matter and the one that decides things.

A parcel from China, the United States or the United Kingdom is an import. It has to be declared, and the customs authority may open it and examine what is inside. For the United Kingdom specifically, the government's guidance on goods sent from abroad covers the charges and the process.

With chemical reagents of ambiguous status this is where parcels stop. Not because an officer recognises a substance, but because the description on the package and in the paperwork raises the question of what kind of goods these are.

None of the three is in the EU customs territory, so a parcel from any of them is an import like any other, however close the country is or however closely tied to the EU otherwise. Switzerland is the one most often misjudged, and since 2021 the United Kingdom belongs on this list rather than the previous one.

The route decides the procedure. The classification of the goods decides the outcome, and that is a different question with a different answer.

Regulation 46 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 says that a person may not sell or supply, or offer to sell or supply, an unauthorised medicinal product. Note what that catches: selling and supplying, not importing. The exposure sits with whoever offers the goods, and it does not depend on whether a parcel cleared customs.

Germany reaches a similar place by a different road. Sec. 73 of the Arzneimittelgesetz prohibits BRINGING an authorisation-liable medicinal product into the country at all, which bites on an intra-EU parcel where the customs question never arises. Two mechanisms, two different parties exposed, and neither of them turns on the shipping route.

Both provisions apply only where the goods are a medicinal product to begin with, and that is decided by a definition rather than by a parcel. The guide to the legal position works through the test.

• Within the EU the customs question is not one. A seller making it a selling point has chosen an argument that costs nothing.
• From outside the EU examination is possible, and for this category of goods it is not unlikely.
• How goods are described matters more than the route they travel, and it matters in both directions.
• A seller who guarantees a parcel will get through is promising something that is not theirs to promise.