Counterfeit articles worth 740 million euros were seized at EU borders last year

China continued to be the main source country from where infringing goods were shipped to the EU.

Every year, the European Commission publishes a report describing the customs detentions of articles suspected of infringing intellectual property rights, such as trademarks, copyrights and patents.

Statistics published for year 2018 show that the number of interceptions of fake goods being imported into the EU increased in 2018 due to a large amount of small parcels in express and postal traffic. Detention figures for seized consignments jumped from 57,433 in 2017 to 69,354 in 2018. Almost 27 million articles that infringed on intellectual property rights (IPR) were detained in 2018 with a street value of nearly 740 million euros.

The top categories of detained articles were cigarettes, which accounted for 15% of the overall amount of detained articles. This was followed by toys (14%), packaging material (9%), labels, tags and stickers (9%) and clothing (8%). Products for daily personal use in the home such as body care articles, medicines, toys and electrical household goods accounted for nearly 37% of the total number of detained articles.

China continued to be the main source country for goods infringing intellectual property rights. North Macedonia was the main provenance for counterfeit alcoholic beverages. Turkey was the top source for other beverages, perfumes and cosmetics. EU customs saw a high number of fake watches, mobile phones and accessories, ink cartridges and toners, CDs/DVDs, labels, tags and stickers from Hong Kong, China. The main source for computer equipment was India, Cambodia for cigarettes and Bosnia and Herzegovina for packaging material.