On 27 November 2023, The European Commission (DG TAXUD) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) released their annual report on the EU enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR). The report presents the efforts made and work carried out by all authorities in the domain of the enforcement of IPRs at the EU border and in the EU internal market in 2022.

In total, approximately 86 million fake items were detained in the EU in 2022 (aggregated data of both the EU external border and the internal market). This is a slight decrease compared to 2021 (detention of approximately 87 million fake items). The estimated value of fake items detained in the EU amounted to over €2 billion in 2022, an increase of approximately 3 % compared to 2021. Almost 60 % of the total value of detained items was accounted for by detentions in the internal market, while the remaining resulted from detentions at the EU border, which corresponds to the percentages of previous years. Other key figures of IPR enforcement in 2022 include the following:

• The five most detained products were games, packaging material, toys, cigarettes and recorded CDs/DVDs. These items accounted for more than 72 % of the products recorded;
• The five products which represented the highest estimated value of detentions were watches, clothing, bags/wallets/purses, jewellery, and games;
• Ten Member States (Italy, France, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Hungary, Greece and Portugal) accounted for over 96 % of the total number of fake items detained in 2022 in the EU. Italy detained over 50% of the total number of fake items, and accounted for over 33 % in terms of estimated value;
• As in previous years, China was the main country from which the majority of fake goods enter the EU, followed by Turkey (mostly fake clothing) and Hong Kong (mostly fake mobile phone accessories).

The report also shows that counterfeiters increasingly ship packaging material and the valuables separately, which indicates the trend that fake goods are more often assembled in the EU. Having assessed the detentions and values in the internal market, another trend is that seemingly cheaper product categories are more often subject to infringements than in previous years.