Do you need a customs declaration when sending a parcel to Monaco (from another EU member state)?

No.1 While Monaco is not an EU member state, it has been in a customs union with France since 1968. This means that shipments to Monaco are treated exactly like shipments to France.

You can also find information about Monaco on the European Commission’s “Taxation and Customs Union” website, which clearly states that Monaco is

Treated as territory of France for customs, VAT and excise purposes.

For an even more authoritative source, take a look at Article 4, Nr. 2 of Regulation (EU) No 952/2013:

The following territories […] shall, taking into account the conventions and treaties applicable to them, be considered to be part of the customs territory of the Union:
(a) FRANCE
The territory of Monaco […]

Part of the customs territory of the EU. This should settle any debate. However, it doesn’t prevent some postal organizations from doing their own (weird) thing.

How do different postal organizations handle parcels to Monaco?

La Poste (France) gets it right:

Monaco is a third-party state with respect to the European Union but is part of the EU customs territory. Therefore, if you send a parcel from France, no specific customs formalities apply.
(Monaco est un état tiers vis-à-vis de l’Union européenne mais fait partie du territoire douanier de l’UE. Ainsi, si vous envoyez un colis de France, aucune formalité douanière spécifique ne s’applique.)

DHL (Germany) is also correct:

Due to an existing monetary and customs union with France, no customs documents are necessary.
(Aufgrund einer bestehenden Währungs- und Zollunion mit Frankreich sind keine Zollpapiere notwendig.)

Bpost (Belgium) lumps Monaco together with countries like Andorra (neither in the EU nor in the customs union) and places that are part of a EU country but not in the customs union, like the German enclave of Büsingen in Switzerland:

Bpost screenshot

While the linked page incorrectly states that customs documents are required for Monaco, Bpost doesn’t actually require them when you create a parcel label online.

POST (Luxembourg) has no information about shipments to Monaco on their website that I could find, but does require you to complete a customs declaration when you create a parcel label through their mypost.lu service (this functionality of mypost may be available to business customers only):

Luxembourg POST's mypost.lu service requires a custom declaration to be filled out for shipments to Monaco, which is not correct

When my boss contacted them about this in December 2024, they incorrectly but confidently replied that:

Monaco is located in Europe but not in the EU, therefore a customs declaration must be made.
(Monaco befindet sich zwar in Europa jedoch nicht in der EU deshalb muss eine Zolldeklarierung gemacht werden.)

So, if you mistakenly thought that you needed a customs declaration for your parcel to Monaco, don’t be too hard on yourself – even postal employees get this very wrong.


  1. The complete answer is: No, unless you’re in a territory that belongs to an EU member state but is not part of the customs union. Again, this is exactly the same as if you were sending a parcel to France. ↩︎