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CLECAT has written to the European Commission’s DG TAXUD in a letter co-signed by CER, FIATA and UIRR, warning that a growing number of European transport and logistics companies are being made to pay for customs fraud they neither committed nor could have detected. The letter follows up on concerns first raised by CER and CLECAT at the Trade Contact Group Plenary meeting in July.

The issue started with containers shipped by rail from China into the EU via the Polish border town of Małaszewicze between 2021 and 2026. Years later, investigations by the EU anti-fraud office OLAF revealed that some importers had falsely described the contents – electric bicycles labelled as spinning bikes, for instance – to avoid paying anti-dumping duties. By the time the fraud came to light, the importers had disappeared or become insolvent.

Polish customs authorities have since turned to whoever is still reachable in the supply chain: railway companies, freight forwarders, customs agents, border agents and storage operators. These businesses are now receiving demands for duties, VAT, penalties and years of accumulated interest, in some cases many times exceeding the value of their assets. The total exposure across the sector runs into hundreds of millions of euros, and several companies risk going under before Polish courts – where appeals can take up to five years – have even examined their cases.

The associations' central argument is simple: a carrier or forwarder is not allowed to open a sealed container and check what is inside. Inspection and control are, by law, the job of customs authorities. In several of these cases, the containers were actually scanned by Polish customs at entry without anything being flagged. Holding operators liable for a control failure that was not theirs, the letter argues, upends the basic division of responsibilities on which the EU customs union rests and makes the risk impossible to price or insure. If the practice spreads, few customs service providers may be willing to operate at the EU's external borders at all, with serious congestion as the likely result.

The letter puts seven questions to the Commission on how EU customs law should be applied, calls for official guidance and proposes an urgent meeting between the Commission, Polish Customs and the signatory associations to find a practical solution. CLECAT will keep members informed on developments.