Not knowing how many cigarettes for personal use one can export from Bulgaria to another EU country is a certain way to get yourself in trouble with Bulgarian Customs.
UK citizen Leslie Green found this out the hard way. In a letter to The Sofia Echo, Green told his story. On September 23, he and his partner had their cigarettes seized at Bourgas Airport by customs officials on their way back to London. Green says that they had 29 cartons of cigarettes between the two of them, which means, given that a carton has 10 boxes of cigarettes, each containing 20 cigarettes, Green and his partner had a total of 5800 cigarettes or 2900 cigarettes each. Customs officers told them they were allowed to export 200 cigarettes each for personal use, and confiscated the total amount. In his letter, Green says that he was taken into an office where he was told to sign a document in Cyrillic, which he refused to do. No one presented any kind of identification, even though Green asked for the officers’ names. After he wrote a statement about what had happened, Greene was allowed to board the aircraft and left for the UK. He managed to collect the document in Cyrillic, which later turned out to be written in Russian by a Ukrainian resident in Prague, on a completely different subject. Leslie wrote to British MEP Graham Watson about the incident.
The Sofia Echo contacted the Customs Office at Bourgas Airport. After some reluctance, the customs official said that they had in their records a report about an incident that happened on September 23. “We have here a record that the two people in question had 30 cartons of cigarettes, which were seized. As for their other complaints, that no one had identified himself to them, and that he was bullied into signing a document in Cyrillic, we cannot say anything until an official investigation is launched. For this to happen we need an official complaint filed by Green to Customs Agency headquarters. Do not worry, we have his statements in English,” the Bourgas customs official, who refused to give his name, said.
What Customs Agency in Sofia told The Sofia Echo was how much cigarettes for personal use a person is allowed to export from Bulgaria to another EU country. “Indeed, on our website the information is misleading, because it dates from 2004 when Bulgaria was not an EU member. This will soon change and we will update the website,” the media office told The Sofia Echo.
According to them, a person can export a total of 800 cigarettes for personal use to an EU country, which means four cartons a person. So Leslie was a little bit over the allowed limit with his 15 cartons of cigarettes. “If someone is caught above the limit, we usually confiscate the entire quantity, write the person a document recording an administrative crime, and let him leave. Of course, this applies to cigarettes that are for personal use. For higher quantities, the person should pay excise duties. Until the Customs Agency updates its website, bear in mind that besides the 800 cigarettes, you are allowed to export to an EU country 200 cigars, 90 litres of wine, 20 litres of spirits and 110 litres of beer.
