What the EU border charges for checking flowers: Annex IV, and one member state's minutes

The rule: fees are mandatory, and they are per check

Regulation (EU) 2017/625 — the Official Controls Regulation — requires member states to collect fees or charges for the official controls performed on consignments of plants and plant products entering the Union (Article 79), and Annex IV, section VIII, sets the minimum amounts for the checks on those consignments. A member state may charge its own costs instead of the Annex amounts; the Annex is the floor and the common reference.

The Annex IV amounts for cut flowers

Source: Regulation (EU) 2017/625, Annex IV, chapter II, section VIII, consolidated text, read 25 September 2026.

The plant health fee is effectively flat for cut flowers. Reaching its EUR 140 cap would take a consignment of roughly nine hundred thousand stems; a commercial airfreight consignment sits far below the 20,000-stem threshold at which the per-thousand increment begins. So a physically inspected consignment meets roughly EUR 31.50 to 38.50 in Union-minimum fees, and an uninspected one meets the documentary fee alone.

Why "per check" is the point

The fee depends on something you do not control — which checks are performed. Every consignment has its documents checked. Whether it also has its identity and its contents checked is decided by the frequency table: Kenyan roses at 25%, carnations at 5%, gypsophila at 3%, and everything not on the table at 100%. A consignment of a listed genus from Kenya is therefore usually a EUR 7 consignment; a consignment of an unlisted genus is always a EUR 31.50-plus consignment. That is the only one of the border-charge structures this site covers where the cost is decided at the border rather than on the invoice. The structures compared →

How one member state executes it: the Netherlands, by the minute

The Annex is a minimum; a member state may charge its costs. The Netherlands does, through KCB, the agency that inspects cut flowers on the NVWA's behalf: from 1 August 2026, EUR 4.16 for the documentary check per consignment (including the check of the additional declarations), and where the consignment is physically inspected a start fee of EUR 66.56 plus EUR 2.08 per minute of inspection. The inspector's time is on the invoice, which is why a consignment presented as one unit, with everything where the inspector expects it, is cheaper at the Dutch border than one that is not. The Dutch execution in full — KCB, CLIENT-import, points of entry →

What is not established: the NVWA sets tariffs of its own for official controls in addition to KCB's; we have not read that regulation and publish no figure. For member states other than the Netherlands we have verified no national schedule and publish none.

What this fee is not

It is not duty (0% under the EPA, 12% third-country — on the EU page), not VAT (national — the Netherlands at 9%, Germany at 7%), not terminal handling, clearance, storage or transport. It is the Union's minimum for the plant health work at the border, and on a Kenyan consignment it is the smallest line on the bill.

What to ask

• Which genera are in the consignment? That decides whether the physical-check fee applies at all.
• Which member state is the point of entry, and does it charge the Annex minimums or its own costs?
• Who is invoiced? In the Netherlands, the party registered with KCB who filed in CLIENT-import.