The European customs authorities confiscated last year almost 27 million of products, one year earlier the figure was about 4 million lower. The value of the goods was in total around 740 million Euros, out of which about 15% goes to cigarettes, 14% to toys and 9% to the packaging material. The items for the body care, medicines and electronic items form together about 37%. The majority of the confiscated goods come – as in the previous years – from China, however there were numerous confiscations also of falsified goods from Hongkong, as for instance of watches, mobile telephones, cartridges for printing, toners and CD and DVD media. Unoriginal cigarettes came from Cambodia, fake alcohol from North Macedonia and fake packaging materials from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Fake cosmetic items mainly derived from Turkey and computers from India.
Around 56 billion Euros is the amount of the losses of the European companies due to the non-original items. According to the opinion of the EU Commission the total losses are about 92 billion Euros – considering the consequences also for other business branches.
