2023-12-01 20:49:27
Black Friday and all the Christmas shopping are not only causing stress for parcel deliverers these days. If the supposed bargain ordered on the Internet comes from the Far East or the immediate EU neighboring countries, customs will take a look at the goods if suspicious.
Published data now shows how great the extent of seized goods and the economic damage caused by counterfeit products was last year: the respective national customs authorities withdrew around 86 million counterfeit items from circulation at the EU’s external borders and in the EU internal market in 2022. says a report from the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in Alicante, Spain, on which the EU Commission’s Directorate General for Taxes and Customs Union worked. The EUIPO estimates the value of the “fake goods” at more than two billion euros, which corresponds to an increase of 3 percent compared to the previous year in 2021.
Higher demand for “fake goods”
After a temporary decline in the Corona year 2020, when significantly fewer goods were confiscated, organized product counterfeiting and thus violations of intellectual property rights have returned to a higher level. Both the trade flows and the relocation of criminal activities can be identified from the data material.
The number of counterfeits actually discovered and entering the EU economic area for the first time is declining significantly. While there were over 75,000 cases last year, in 2022 there will only be 63,000 confiscated consignments of goods, which corresponds to a decrease of 15 percent. However, the value of the goods, which still mainly come from China, Hong Kong and Turkey, rose by 11 percent to an estimated 943 million euros. The prices offered by product pirates abroad have apparently risen as buyers’ demands have increased – the report mentions a “significant increase”, particularly in some of the most expensive categories such as electronics, smartphones and clothing.
The trend is clearer in the EU internal market: Here the number of seized counterfeits rose by around 26 percent within a year. Police, customs and national market surveillance authorities withdrew 67 million products from circulation. However, their estimated value stagnated at 1.2 billion euros, which the EU Office and the Commission attribute to a “significant shift” towards cheap products.
Almost 97 percent of all counterfeit products were seized in just six Member States. Italy is the leader with 63 percent, well ahead of France, Spain and the Netherlands. Cigarettes, packaging material and toys were most frequently counterfeited in the internal market, while copied computer games, DVDs and sound recordings were much more frequently requested by buyers from other EU countries.
Christian Schubert, Rome and Marcus Jung, Frankfurt Published/Updated: Recommendations: 24 Marco Dettweiler Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 16 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 6
In another study, the EUIPO recently highlighted a number of factors that – when they work together – can increase the extent of product piracy in an economy. Accordingly, there is a connection between the number of counterfeit products and the total value of imports into a country, the level of education and the average income of the population, the infrastructure and free access to the Internet.
The analysis comes to the conclusion that the growing role of the Internet has significantly facilitated the trade in counterfeit goods. According to the study from July 2023, it is generally very easy to be deceived in the online environment.
#Fake #goods #Online #trading #encourages #counterfeit #products