A million Portuguese hostage to Portugal’s postal service over PDDP system

Over a million people, including Portuguese citizens living in the US, still can’t send small packages to the United States because Portugal’s postal service CTT  has yet to roll out its new Postal Delivered Duty Paid system or PDDP.

According to an in-house designer who wished to remain anonymous, over a million Portuguese living in Portugal and the United States are being held “hostage” to the CTT situation.

And it’s causing havoc for small businesses, including an estimated 5,000 people on Etsy alone (a global online marketplace specializing in handmade, vintage, and unique, creative goods, including jewelry, apparel, home decor, and craft supplies), who sell more items to the United States than to Europe.

And the delays affect more than a million Portuguese or luso-descendants in the United States with families in Portugal that relied on the postal service to send gifts, particularly at holiday seasons, to their families.

“CTT has not yet implemented the PDDP (Postal Delivered Duty Paid) system for sending packages to the USA. Since August 2025”, the designer says.

“Correos in Spain has had the situation resolved for six months. Post Nord (Sweden and Denmark), PostNL (Netherlands), Royal Mail (United Kingdom), and Post (Ireland) and others also solved it months ago”, he continues.

And laments that “the other European countries received the same information and requirements as CTT and have already resolved the situation, with the same information, meeting the requirements and enabling shipments to the United States”.

The last article that appeared in the Portuguese press about the situation appeared on the online news source Observador in September 2025 in which it was stated: “Anacom indicates that it is monitoring the situation at “European and international level, together with other Regulatory Authorities (…) in order to minimise the impact of this decision on the international postal service and to understand the impact on universal service obligations at the European Union level.”

And the response from CTT (Portuguese postal service), since August 29th was:

“CTT is already working to implement the changes and resume sending goods to the USA as quickly as possible.”

“The US customs authorities have not yet clarified all the requirements to be applied. These requirements will force adaptations on postal companies worldwide.”

“CTT is the only provider of the Universal Postal Service in Portugal. They are the only ones who can summarize the sending of postal packages with goods to the United States, using the PDDP system.

They are harming thousands of Portuguese citizens, who cannot send gifts to their relatives in the United States, and thousands of small business owners who sell handcrafted goods and still do not have a viable postal solution to send to the United States, like the other countries of the European Union”, the man complained.

“They are holding the Portuguese here and in the United States hostage, so they can extort more money from the Portuguese government, because they do not want to maintain the universal postal service. They only want to keep CTT Express, after having sold all of CTT’s real estate assets.”, the desinger concluded.

Image: CTT