Romania is the CEE country most affected by cigarettes smuggling

Romania comes first among Central and Eastern European countries according to the level of illegal cigarette trafficking, after last year the Polish authorities managed to significantly reduce the activity of smuggling networks. In March 2018, the black market of cigarettes in Romania reached 17.2 percent of total consumption, up by 1.6 percent from the beginning of the same year, British American Tobacco said in a statement.

“In the context in which Romania has climbed to a No 1 place that no one wants, the market for selling and a huge source of profits for smuggling networks, the announcement of the Ministry of Finance that the solutions for border security have been identified and that their implementation will be achieved by the end of this year, is welcome,” said Ileana Dumitru, Legal and Public Relations Director of British American Tobacco, Central and Southern Europe.

According to stopcontraband.com, in 2017 the Romanian authorities prevented about 150 million cigarettes from reaching the black market, but only about 3 percent of the total illicit cigarettes consumed in the country.

“With the EUR 640 million not collected by the state for smuggled cigarettes sold last year in Romania, all the scanners and equipment needed to prevent any counterfeit product from getting into the country, not just cigarettes, could have been purchased”, he said Ileana Dumitru.

According to the “Sun Report” study of 2017 by KPMG and Royal United Services Institute in the UK, the main measure adopted by Poland was to strengthen border security with Belarus and the Kaliningrad region of Russia, the two areas of which the majority originated smuggling cigarettes.

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