Most furniture enters the European Union duty-free, and most of it does not need CE marking. The compliance work is elsewhere: import VAT at the member state rate, the EU Deforestation Regulation timeline for wood furniture, ISPM 15 marks on your pallets, and a document pack that your freight forwarder cannot invent for you. The good news is that every one of these checks is mechanical and can be settled before the container leaves Foshan.

We verified the numbers in this guide on 9 August 2026 against the EU TARIC database and official Commission pages. The main furniture lines carry 0% duty, VAT runs from 17% to 27% depending on the member state, and wood furniture is inside the EUDR with a 30 December 2026 application date for large and medium operators.

What the EU Charges on Furniture Imports

The EU applies the Common Customs Tariff to imports from China, and furniture sits in a favorable position. Seats under HS 9401 and furniture under HS 9403 carry 0% duty on the main lines: we checked wooden seats (9401 61), metal furniture (9403 20) and wooden furniture (9403 60) in the TARIC database on 9 August 2026, and all three show 0%. The official tool to confirm your exact code is Access2Markets, which shows the binding tariff and any measures for your specific 10-digit code.

What you do pay is import VAT. VAT is charged at the standard rate of the member state where you declare the goods, on the CIF value plus any duty. The EU floor is 15%, and the 2026 standard rates run from 17% in Luxembourg to 27% in Hungary, per the Tax Foundation’s January 2026 table. The spread matters: a EUR 10,000 CIF consignment attracts EUR 1,900 of VAT in Germany at 19%, and EUR 1,700 in Luxembourg at 17%. That is illustrative arithmetic, but it is the arithmetic your cash flow runs on, so choose the entry member state deliberately and structure the declaration accordingly.

CE Marking: When It Applies and When It Does Not

CE marking is the most misunderstood word in EU furniture importing. Ordinary furniture has no harmonised EU legislation, which means no CE marking is required for a standard chair, table, sofa or cabinet. If a Chinese factory quotes you a “CE certificate” for a plain wooden chair, it is charging you for paperwork you do not need. The official Your Europe CE marking guide lists which products the marking covers, and general furniture is not among them.

The exception is electrically operated furniture. A motorised recliner, an adjustable bed with actuators, or a desk with a motor contains electrical parts, so it falls under the Low Voltage Directive and the EMC Directive, and the finished product needs a CE declaration of conformity. In our experience, adding electrical testing for a motorised model in third-party Guangzhou labs costs $300-$800 per model and adds 2-4 weeks to the timeline, so build it into the schedule at quoting, not at the port.

Do not confuse CE with the fire and emission tests that EU buyers do ask for. Upholstered furniture is commonly specified with EN 1021-1 and EN 1021-2 ignition test reports, and UK buyers add BS 5852. These are buyer or contract requirements, not CE obligations, and a Foshan factory can produce them if you write them into the spec before production.

The EUDR Timeline for Wood Furniture

Wood furniture is inside the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), Regulation (EU) 2023/1115. The regulation bans placing on the EU market products that come from land deforested after 31 December 2020, and it requires a due diligence statement from the operator placing the goods on the market. Sofas, chairs, cabinets and other items that contain wood in scope are covered, including wood-based panels used in construction of the product.

The dates moved twice, and the current position after the December 2025 revision is official: large and medium operators must comply from 30 December 2026, and micro and small operators from 30 June 2027. Micro and small operators already covered by the EU Timber Regulation switch over on 30 December 2026. The full text is in Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on EUR-Lex, and the Commission’s dedicated page tracks the timeline.

What this means for a China sourcing program is practical. The due diligence chain starts at the factory: which forest the wood came from, which sawmill supplied the board, and which documents prove it. Factories that cannot name their timber source will struggle to sell into the EU after the application dates. When we source EU-bound wood furniture, we ask for the timber origin paperwork at the factory-vetting stage, because it cannot be reconstructed after production.

Wood Packaging and ISPM 15

Your furniture may be compliant while your pallets sink the shipment. Wood packaging material, including pallets, crates and dunnage, must be ISPM 15 compliant: heat treated to 56 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes or fumigated, then marked with the official IPPC stamp. The IPPC ISPM standards page is the authority on the marking rules. An unmarked pallet can trigger treatment, re-export or destruction of the entire consignment at the EU port of entry.

Two practical notes from our freight desk. First, engineered wood packaging such as plywood panels and OSB is generally exempt from ISPM 15, which is why many furniture factories ship on plywood crates for EU orders. Second, verify the mark on the actual shipment, not the photo in the factory’s sales deck. We have caught factories that heat-treated the sample crate and skipped the production crates.

Fire Safety, Formaldehyde and Other Specs

Beyond duty and the EUDR, EU buyers specify three product-level requirements. The first is upholstery flammability: EN 1021-1 for cigarette ignition and EN 1021-2 for match ignition, with the test reports issued by a lab the buyer accepts. The second is formaldehyde for wood panels, specified as E1 class with a chamber-test limit of 0.124 mg/m3 under EN 717-1. The third is hardware and finish durability, which EU hospitality buyers often tie to the EN standards family; the BSI standards catalogue is the reference when your buyer cites a specific EN number.

Set these specs at the quoting stage. A test report requested after production means a second lab visit, a 2-3 week delay and a retest bill. In the UK import guide we walk through the same discipline for the British market, and the Canada guide covers the North American variant, so you can keep one compliance checklist across markets.

Checklist item	What it covers	Issued by	Stage
HS code check	Duty rate for your exact code	TARIC / Access2Markets	Before quoting
EN 1021-1/-2 reports	Upholstery ignition resistance	Third-party lab	Before production
E1 formaldehyde class	Panel emissions limit	Board supplier cert	Material sourcing
CE DoC	Electrical furniture only	Factory + testing lab	Before production
EUDR records	Timber origin, due diligence	Factory timber docs	Factory vetting
ISPM 15 marks	Wood packaging treatment	Packaging supplier	Loading day

Documents and the Clearance Flow

The clearance flow starts before the ship sails. Your company needs an EORI number from the customs authority of the member state where you import, and every consignment is declared electronically, with an ICS2 pre-arrival security declaration filed before the vessel reaches EU waters. The document pack has five stable pieces: the commercial invoice with HS codes and values, the packing list, the bill of lading, the ISPM 15 evidence for wooden packaging, and the CE declaration of conformity where the product is electrically operated. Keep test reports, EUDR due diligence records and the purchase contract in the same folder, because customs and your buyer can ask for any of them.

For the freight side of the flow, our About Shipping page explains the FCL and LCL options we run to European ports, and sea transit from Foshan ports to Hamburg or Rotterdam typically runs 30-40 days. The destination-market guides for the USA and the furniture import duties and taxes guide cover the same document logic for other routes.

Common Mistakes EU-Bound Shipments Hit

Mistake one is paying for a CE certificate on non-electrical furniture. Mistake two is entering the EU through the member state with the highest VAT when your warehouse could take delivery through a lower-rate state, because the VAT rate follows the member state of import, not the country of your customer. Mistake three is letting the factory choose the wood packaging, which produces an unmarked pallet at the port.

Mistake four is ignoring the EUDR until 2026. Factories with clean timber documents will have capacity after the application date, and factories without them will disappear from your shortlist. Mistake five is shipping without test reports in hand and discovering the buyer requires EN 1021 when the container is already at sea. Every one of these mistakes is avoidable at the quotation stage, which is where the money is actually saved. Our step-by-step customs clearance guide shows the process we run per shipment so nothing waits until the port call.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Zero duty on the tariff line, VAT at the member state rate, CE only for electrical furniture, EUDR paperwork for wood, and ISPM 15 marks on the crates. Nail those five, and the EU is one of the cleanest furniture markets to enter from China.

If you are planning an EU-bound container, send us the product list and the destination member state. We will verify the HS codes, collect the test reports and timber documents at the factory, and quote the landed cost before you book the vessel.