Fashion and beauty goods were among the biggest targets in a sweeping European counterfeit crackdown that netted more than 1.7 million items valued at €17.4 million. According to newly-released data from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (“EUIPO”), authorities intercepted more than half a million counterfeit clothing items worth upwards of €9 million during Joint Action Day Pirates 4, an operation targeting illicit goods moving into and across Europe. The seizures stretched from airports to ports and land borders and included tens of thousands of Nike-branded garments, along with counterfeit Dior and Burberry cosmetics and perfumes bearing the names of some of luxury’s biggest brands.
Fashion, Beauty Goods in Focus
One of the largest fashion seizures came at Bulgaria’s Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, where authorities discovered 41,280 counterfeit Nike-branded garments in a truck arriving from Türkiye. Valued at more than €1.65 million, the goods consisted of Croatian national team T-shirts destined for Croatia ahead of the World Cup. Beauty goods also featured prominently in the operation. Authorities seized more than 100,000 counterfeit cosmetics and perfumes worth upwards of €1 million, including 83,738 products at the Port of Naples bearing names associated with Giorgio Armani, Yves Saint Laurent, Lancôme, and Paco Rabanne, among others.
At the Port of Hamburg, customs officials inspecting a container from China discovered another 2,880 suspected counterfeit Burberry lipsticks and 1,440 Christian Dior lipstick sets, collectively valued at €374,400.
The scale of the seizures reflects the broader economic impact of counterfeiting on both sectors. In a 2024 study drawing on data from 2018 to 2021, the EUIPO estimated that counterfeit goods cost the EU clothing industry nearly €12 billion in sales annually, equivalent to 5.2 percent of sales, while the cosmetics industry lost an estimated €3 billion, or 4.8 percent.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: EU authorities detained more than 112 million counterfeit items at the border and within the internal market in 2024, with an estimated retail value of more than €3.8 billion. While the number of items fell from more than 152 million in 2023, their estimated value reached an all-time high, according to the EUIPO. Clothing, clothing accessories, perfumes, and cosmetics were among the seven product categories that collectively accounted for almost 74 percent of goods detained in 2024.
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