Dutch customs last year intercepted 36.3 million euros' worth of smuggled cigarettes, caretaker Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager has told parliament.

Together with the fiscal research unit (FIOD), customs officials confiscated 209 million cigarettes smuggled into the country from China and Eastern Europe. That is slightly more than the 204 million intercepted in 2008. The FIOD signals a new trend of tobacco products being smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates. In the Netherlands, a 55 percent tax is levied on cigarettes.

European effort
But the market is flooded with far more than those 209 million fake cigarettes, crime watchers say. "Yes, we're intercepting only a fraction of what comes onto the Dutch market," Minister De Jager admitted to NOS public radio. "That's why I and my EU colleagues will step up efforts to end this illegal trade in a product that is endangering public health."

The Netherlands predominantly functions as a transit port for the contraband cigarettes. Most of the illegal tobacco wares end up abroad.

Since 2005 consumption of counterfeit cigarettes in the Netherlands has fallen from 4 to 0.9 percent, presumably because smokers are dissatisfied with the quality of the cheap fake cigarettes.

© Radio Netherlands Worldwide