From: EurActiv.com
By Sarantis Michalopoulos
“Cheap whites” produced in Belarus and seized at the Polish border.
Cigarette smuggling costs national and EU budgets more than €10 billion annually in lost public revenue and is a major source of organised crime, including terrorism, Margarete Hofmann told Euractiv in an interview.
Margarete Hofmann is director of policy at the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).
She spoke with Euractiv’s Sarantis Michalopoulos.
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How do you assess cooperation between EU countries and the industry on the issue considering that the EU recently decided not to renew cooperation with Philip Morris International? Can the EU tackle the illicit tobacco trade by its own means?
Under the anti-fraud agreements between the EU, the member states and the four major tobacco manufacturers (one of which, the PMI Agreement, has now expired), cooperation, on the whole, has been effective. For example, the prevalence of PMI contraband on the illicit EU tobacco market dropped by around 85% from 2006 to 2014.
