EU audit office: cigarette mafia produces illegally in Germany
Every tenth cigarette smoked in the EU is illegal. The European Court of Auditors warns of a lack of coordination in the fight against tobacco smuggling.
Audit office criticises EU failure in illegal tobacco trade
Every tenth cigarette smoked in the EU comes from illegal trade. This emerges from a special report by the European Court of Auditors published today. According to BILD, the auditors consider the measures taken so far by the EU and its member states to be "not robust" enough.
The auditors criticise a "lack of clear priorities and coordination at EU level". Responsibilities are fragmented, information is exchanged too late or incompletely, and there is no central coordination body at all. The Court of Auditors therefore calls on the European Commission to take a more active role in fighting illegal tobacco trade.
13 billion euros in tax damage – without reliable data base
Brussels cannot even reliably quantify the size of the illegal market. According to estimates, around 13 billion euros in customs duties, value-added tax and excise taxes are lost to public budgets annually. However, this figure is based on external studies – an independent, EU-wide reliable calculation does not yet exist.
According to the Court of Auditors, illegal tobacco trade has undergone fundamental changes in recent years. Organised criminal groups are increasingly shifting illegal production from Ukraine directly into EU states in order to shorten supply routes and reach smokers more directly.
Germany ranks third among illegal production sites
Germany is considered a hotspot for illegal cigarette production. For the years 2023 and 2024, the Court of Auditors identifies between 21 and 40 shut-down production facilities – the report does not provide more specific figures. This places Germany third in the EU behind Belgium and Poland.
Nevertheless, German investigators repeatedly succeed in dealing serious blows to the industry. In March of last year, the customs investigation office in Essen closed down an industrial manufacturing facility for smuggled cigarettes in Düsseldorf. The officers secured 15 tonnes of tobacco and more than 25 million counterfeit cigarettes of various brands. The perpetrators, now convicted to prison sentences of between three and six years, are said to have produced around 300 million untaxed cigarettes – the resulting tax damage amounts to over 54 million euros. In Saxony too, customs investigators seized around 950,000 cigarettes in Dresden last year.
Similar successes were reported by authorities in Belgium and Spain. Yet despite these individual successes, the Court of Auditors criticises different national approaches and gaps in cross-border cooperation. The auditors identify inadequate control of the raw tobacco supply chain and incompatible information systems between investigative authorities as some of the most important drivers of illegal production.
Court of Auditors member: "Organised crime has a strategy"
Petri Sarvamaa, the member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the report, summarises the situation clearly: "The EU cannot afford to lose the fight against illegal tobacco trade. The European Commission and member states must do more to contain this criminal phenomenon if they truly want to protect the health, money and security of their citizens. Organised crime has a strategy. We need one too."
Source: BILD