Customs officers seized 28,000 suspected counterfeit condoms during an inspection of a sea shipment arriving from Greece on Thursday.
The container was selected for scanning and a physical inspection following a risk assessment.
According to customs, the products appeared to infringe the intellectual property rights of a well-known brand, based on the accompanying documents and invoices.
The owner of the company involved reportedly admitted that the condoms were counterfeit.
Procedures for the confiscation and destruction of the products are expected to follow in the coming days.
Customs warned that counterfeit condoms could pose serious health risks, including unwanted pregnancies and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections.
The customs department will from November 1 introduce a new €2 processing fee for all goods arriving in Cyprus from outside the European single market, department spokesman George Constantinou said on Wednesday.
“This is not an additional duty. It is a fee for processing customs controls, which results from the broader customs reform taking place in the European Union and the adoption of the new union customs code,” he told the Cyprus News Agency.
He explained that the new fee will go hand-in-hand with the European Union’s €3 temporary customs duty on what it described as “low-value parcels” with a value of up to €150 entering Europe from outside the single market, but that the new €2 fee will apply to all parcels entering from outside the single market, regardless of value.
This, he said, is because the EU’s new customs regime requires “additional working hours, possibly additional personnel, and specialised equipment, both for the identification of dangerous products and for the analysis of the data entered into the department’s electronic import systems”.
He also said that following the introduction of the €3 duty on July 1, the number of parcels arriving in Cyprus from outside the single market has fallen by between 30 and 35 per cent, but that the number of items sent in any given parcel has increased.
Previously, he said, parcels generally contained one or two items, but now, they contain four or five.
“So, in terms of the number of items, we are approximately at the same level as we had before the imposition of the measure,” he said.
New duty raises over €1m per month
Regarding the amount raised by the new duty, he said that between €1 million and €1.5 million per month is collected, but that of that figure, around 75 per cent is “returned to the European Union”.
When the duty had been introduced in July, the European Commission explained that “every day, millions of low-value parcels enter the EU” and that “many contain products which do not meet EU safety standards or are undervalued or falsely declared to avoid customs duties”.
“At the same time, the current customs duty exemption gives non-EU sellers an unfair advantage over businesses that manufacture or sell products in the EU,” it said.
As such, it added, “the new measure will help create fairer competition for EU businesses, better protect consumers from unsafe products, tackle customs fraud, and address environmental concerns over mass shipping”.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced a campaign against listening to music or videos without headphones on public transportation. We asked London commuters to weigh in.
Traveling on the London subway in April. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced a national campaign against “one of the most annoying things on public transport” — people blasting music or videos from their phone.
The European Parliament has approved a major overhaul of the EU’s customs system, tightening requirements on e-commerce platforms, introducing a new handling fee for goods ordered from outside the bloc and creating a central EU customs authority.
“This is the biggest reform of European customs since 1968, supporting trade and the enforcement of EU rules,” said MEP Dirk Gotink, (EPP, Netherlands) who steered the legislation through Parliament. Gotink said European customs authorities had been overwhelmed by a “tsunami of Chinese parcels” and that the reform would give customs officers stronger tools to enforce EU standards.
Under the new rules, e-commerce platforms and sellers shipping goods directly from non-EU countries to European consumers will be treated as importers. That will make them responsible for providing customs data, handling applicable charges and ensuring products comply with EU law.
The reform also introduces an EU-wide handling fee on goods ordered directly from non-EU countries, with member states required to begin collecting it no later than 1 November, 2026. The European Commission will determine the amount and review it every two years.
Companies that repeatedly breach EU customs rules could face fines ranging from at least 1% to as much as 6% of the value of goods they imported into the EU during the previous 12 months.
The overhaul will also establish an EU Customs Data Hub, designed to replace at least 111 existing customs IT systems. A new EU Customs Authority, based in Lille, France, will manage the hub and coordinate customs cooperation and risk management across the EU.
The Council has already given the reform its final formal approval, making Parliament’s vote the final step in the legislative procedure.
Discover the new available training paths for taxation and for customs officers on the EU Learning Potal.
Two curricula modules for taxation and for customs officers from candidate and potential candidate countries have been released on the DG TAXUD Customs, Tax & CBAM EU Learning Portal. These modules are gateways that guide and provide direct access to targeted training resources designed for taxation officers or customs officers in candidate and potential candidate countries.
The modules feature links to selected courses of the training catalogue of the portal, displayed in a pre-determined order, to provide an extensive knowledge on the EU customs and taxation acquis and its implementation. Taxation and customs officers can also select a specific course according to their competence and/or need.
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