Importing from Vietnam to the EU: Duty, VAT and Freight 2026

The tariff number most buyers get wrong: 85.6% became 99.2%

The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) has been in force since 1 August 2020. On day one the EU removed duties on 85.6% of tariff lines for Vietnamese goods, which covered 70.3% of Vietnam's export value to Europe. Within seven years the EU reaches 99.2% of tariff lines and 99.7% of export value. The last of those seven-year cuts land on 1 January 2027. What stays outside the deal is small: roughly 0.3% of lines, mostly rice, sweet corn, garlic and sugar, which come in under tariff-rate quotas rather than free.

I priced a 40-foot container of acacia and rattan dining furniture out of Binh Duong in June. The EU common external tariff on the lines I was using sat between 2.7% and 6%. With a movement certificate EUR.1 issued through Vietnam's eCoSys system, the duty line came back at zero on 14,690 EUR of customs value, which took about 400 EUR off the bill before VAT. That is what the agreement is worth when the paperwork is right. When it is wrong you pay the tariff rate and you pay VAT on top of the tariff.

Two port clusters do almost all the work, and they are 1,600 km apart

Vietnamese container exports leave through two clusters, and they are not interchangeable. In the south, Cai Mep-Thi Vai sits about 60 km south-east of Ho Chi Minh City and 30 km north-west of Vung Tau. It is the only place in the country that regularly takes the largest deep-sea ships, with berths rated for vessels up to 200,000 DWT and terminals TCIT, CMIT, SSIT and Gemalink. That is where the direct North Europe strings call. In the north, Hai Phong handled 5,695,839 TEU in 2024 and ranked 32nd on Lloyd's List of the world's top container ports. The Lach Huyen island terminal, roughly 40 km east of the city and linked by bridge, added berths 3 and 4 in a joint venture with MSC during 2025, and since May 2025 Vietnam allows Lach Huyen to take ships up to 165,000 DWT.

I made the classic mistake on my first Vietnam order. I let the supplier choose the port because it was nearest his factory in the north, then wondered why the rate I had budgeted from Ho Chi Minh had grown by about 900 USD. The box was sailing from Hai Phong, which is a different lane with different carriers and a different rate card. If the factory is in Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Long An or Ho Chi Minh City, the cargo goes south. If it is in Hanoi, Bac Ninh or Hai Duong, it goes north. Ask which port before you ask for a rate.

• Cai Mep-Thi Vai (south): deep water, big ships, the direct Europe strings. Right for Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Long An and Ho Chi Minh City.
• Cat Lai (south, on the Saigon river): river draft limits, feeder and intra-Asia services, cheaper terminal handling but usually a transhipment before Europe.
• Hai Phong and Lach Huyen (north): the gateway for the Red River Delta manufacturing belt. Ranked 32nd in the world by container volume in 2024.
• Da Nang (centre): the third cluster by size and a poor fit for full containers heading to North Europe. It is a feeder play.
• The two main clusters are roughly 1,600 km apart by road. Never treat a Hai Phong quote and a Cai Mep quote as two prices for the same thing.

What the freight actually costs out of Vietnam

Freight is where the variance lives. Two ports in the same country can differ by hundreds of dollars per container, and the same lane quoted door-to-door instead of port-to-port can nearly double. The table below is the lane I have watched most closely, Cai Mep and Ho Chi Minh City to Rotterdam, using 2025-2026 market ranges.

Two transit numbers for the same lane is normal and it is not a trick. Our own Vietnam to Netherlands route page quotes Ho Chi Minh City to Rotterdam at 22-28 days, because that is the fastest direct string with no transhipment. A forwarder quoting 29-47 days is usually pricing a door-to-door service that adds inland collection, a transhipment in Singapore or Algeciras, or routing around the Cape of Good Hope. Before you compare quotes, check whether each one ends at Rotterdam or at your warehouse. The other swing factors are bunker surcharges, Cai Mep congestion around Tet, and container imbalance, since it is still usually cheaper to export from Asia than to ship back into it.

• Quotes diverge most on what is included: origin haulage, terminal handling, BAF, and the destination delivery leg.
• August to October is the peak window into Europe. Rates and space both tighten.
• A 40HC usually beats two 20ft containers once you are past about 30 CBM, but check the weight limit before you assume it.
• LCL looks cheap per CBM until you add the destination CFS charges, which are charged per shipment, not per CBM.

The four costs a 0% duty rate does not remove

Zero duty does not mean zero cost. A Vietnamese container arriving in the EU picks up four other layers, and three of them have moved in 2026.

The VAT layer is the one that catches people out, because it is large and it is not a cost you can design away. On 14,690 EUR of customs value the Dutch VAT alone is 3,084.90 EUR. If you are VAT-registered in the EU you recover it, but you finance it first, and because it is charged on the duty-paid value, a duty you failed to avoid quietly raises your VAT as well. That is the mechanical reason a 1,101 EUR duty ends up costing more than 1,101 EUR.

• CBAM is the newest of the four and the least understood by small importers. If your Vietnamese supplier ships steel components, ask who files the CBAM report.
• The EUDR is the reason coffee and rubber orders now arrive with latitude and longitude attached to the plot. Ask for the geolocation file at order stage, not at the port.
• GPSR is a named-person obligation, not a labelling formality. If nobody in the EU is named for your product, you do not have a compliant import.

The EUR 3 low-value duty, and the exemption most Vietnamese sellers miss

On 1 July 2026 the EU abolished the duty exemption for consignments up to EUR 150 and replaced it with a temporary flat customs duty of EUR 3. It is charged per item, not per parcel, and it runs until 1 July 2028, when normal tariff rates come back. The declarant pays it: the seller, the importer, an IOSS holder or a representative. Five T-shirts in one parcel attract EUR 3 because they are one item. One T-shirt and one watch attract EUR 6 because they are two. A separate Union handling fee is also planned, with the amount and the application date to be decided in autumn 2026.

Here is the part worth real money. The European Commission's own guidance excludes goods that benefit from preferential trade agreements, provided the VAT was not collected under IOSS and the goods are declared under H1 in the customs declaration. Vietnam has a preferential agreement with the EU. So a commercial consignment up to EUR 150 containing three product lines, say a pair of sandals, a scarf and a leather belt, would otherwise carry 3 x EUR 3, or EUR 9, at the border. With Vietnamese origin declared properly it carries nothing. The trap is the route: if the same goods are sold business-to-consumer and the VAT is collected through IOSS at checkout, the exclusion does not apply and the EUR 3 per item lands anyway. If you sell both ways, that one filing decision is worth more than most people's duty-rate negotiation.

• The EUR 3 applies per item, so the number of distinct product types in the parcel is what costs you, not the number of units.
• The exclusion needs all three: a preferential origin claim, no IOSS collection of the VAT, and an H1 declaration.
• Over EUR 150 the EUR 3 does not apply at all. Normal tariff rates do, and with a valid proof of origin those are zero for most Vietnamese goods.
• Keep the export side in mind too. For commercial consignments up to EUR 6,000 any exporter can make out an origin declaration on the invoice, which is what makes the small-parcel exemption practical.

A EUR 12,000 order, priced two ways

Numbers make the point faster than adjectives. This is a real-shaped order: 2,400 kg of roasted and instant coffee in 200 cases, from a processor near Bien Hoa, shipped in a 40HC from Cai Mep to Rotterdam and sold into the Netherlands. Customs value in the EU is CIF, meaning goods plus freight plus insurance. The common external tariff on roasted coffee is 7.5%, and under the EVFTA that line has been at zero since 1 August 2020.

Missing origin proof costs EUR 1,333.12 on a EUR 12,000 order. That is 11.1% of the goods value, or EUR 0.56 a kilo, or EUR 6.67 a case. In the EU you can still claim preferential treatment after importation by presenting a valid proof of origin, and that proof can be issued after export, so the duty is recoverable in principle. The VAT is recoverable too if you are registered. What is not recoverable is the time, the cash you finance in the meantime, and the fact that your selling price was set before you found out. I have watched a specialty roaster discover this in a peak December, and the EUR 6.67 a case was small compared with the eight weeks of phone calls.

• The reason the gap is 11.1% and not 7.5% is the VAT: a duty raises the VAT base as well.
• Coffee is also the commodity where the EUDR bites hardest, so budget for traceability data as a separate cost line.
• If your goods are already zero-rated at the tariff level for other reasons, none of this applies. Check your own HS line first.

Where Vietnam origin claims actually fail

EuroCham's five-year review of the agreement lists rules of origin among the main difficulties its members report, and after six years of these orders I believe it. The failures are rarely exotic. They are the same handful of misunderstandings every time.

The 2026 change matters here. Circular 14/2026/TT-BCT took effect on 10 May 2026 and replaced Circular 11/2020/TT-BCT. It moved Vietnam's product-specific rules onto HS 2022 and reshaped self-certification, including REX-based declarations. If your HS codes or your origin workings were last checked in 2021, they need checking again, because a rule that matched your code then may not match it now. That is a boring sentence, and it is the single most common reason a preferential claim collapses at the border.

• Start from the fabric, not the garment, if you buy textiles or footwear.
• Ask your supplier which Cumulation option they used. If the answer is none, ask why not.
• Keep a written origin view from your broker on file before the first shipment, not after the third one.
• Confirm the current self-certification position with Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade before you rely on it.

The three pieces of paper that decide your duty

Proving origin under the EVFTA is asymmetric. The two directions do not use the same documents, and that catches people out. European exporters to Vietnam self-certify with a statement on the invoice and the EU does not issue EUR.1 certificates at all, which is why asking a European supplier for one is a waste of a week. Vietnamese exporters to the EU work differently.

Whichever route you use, the paper has a shelf life and a matching test. A proof of origin is valid for 12 months from the date it is issued in the exporting country and has to be presented inside that window. The description on the certificate has to identify your goods, not just their HS heading. And above EUR 6,000 an origin declaration without a REX or authorisation number on it is not worth the paper it is printed on. My own pre-shipment check takes about a minute and has saved me more money than any rate negotiation I have ever had.

• Is the proof inside its 12-month validity, and will it still be inside it on the day the goods arrive?
• Does the description identify the goods, or does it just repeat a chapter heading?
• Is the consignment above EUR 6,000? Then the declaration needs an authorisation or REX number.
• Can you retrieve bills of materials, supplier declarations and production records for three years?
• Are you claiming after import? The EU allows it; the mirror route in Vietnam is stricter and time-limited.
• Private-to-private small parcels up to EUR 500, and travellers' personal luggage up to EUR 1,200, need no proof of origin at all. Commercial consignments always do.

What I would do before 1 January 2027

The seven-year phase-downs end on 1 January 2027. After that date the EU's tariff on essentially everything Vietnam sells into Europe is zero: 99.2% of tariff lines and 99.7% by value. At that point the duty rate stops being a lever in your supplier negotiation, and the only thing left that can make you pay is a documentation failure. My advice sounds backwards, and I stand by it: stop shopping on the duty rate and start shopping on the origin file. A supplier who can issue a clean EUR.1 without three weeks of chasing is worth more than a supplier whose unit price is two cents lower.

The counter-argument is fair. Origin paperwork has a cost, and 7.5% on a EUR 12,000 order is only 1,101 EUR. But the moment you add the VAT that the duty drags in, the missing proof cost 1,333 EUR, which is more than most brokers charge to keep an origin file clean for a year. Do the arithmetic on your own numbers before you decide it is not worth the effort. And if you are a small seller shipping business-to-consumer parcels under EUR 150, decide now whether the IOSS route or the preferential-plus-H1 route is cheaper, because from July 2026 the EUR 3 per item charge makes that decision real money rather than an accounting detail.

• Re-check every HS code you use against HS 2022 before 1 January 2027, not after a held shipment.
• Ask each supplier whether they hold an approved or registered exporter authorisation, and get the answer in writing.
• On textiles and footwear, ask for the fabric origin before you place the order. It is the one thing that cannot be fixed afterwards.
• Budget the VAT as cash flow, not as a cost, and do not let it hide a duty you could have avoided.
• Run your own numbers in the calculator with Vietnam as origin: the Vietnam to Netherlands route is preloaded with the Netherlands VAT rate and lane-based freight, and you can switch the duty rate to zero to see exactly what the origin file is worth to you.

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