Svilengrad is a small town of only around 16,000–20,000 inhabitants, but it is located at the most important road entry point for commercial goods travelling from Turkey into the European Union. This also makes the area one of the key entry points for counterfeit goods and therefore a particularly important location for detecting and stopping them before they move further into the EU market.
Eighteen years ago, we at Turcu, Tadjer & Turcu organised our first anti-counterfeiting conference here. Since then, we have returned almost every year, developing it into one of the biggest conferences of its kind. This year, we are back in Svilengrad for another two days dedicated to cooperation, training and the fight against counterfeit goods entering the European Union.
This year’s conference, organised together with React, brings together 130 participants, mainly from customs, police, prosecution authorities and other enforcement bodies. Over two days, the programme includes dozens of presentations and practical discussions, while our networking dinner between the two conference days gathered almost 150 people.
For us, Svilengrad has remained a priority for many years. The purpose of these meetings has always been very practical: to give customs officers, police officers and prosecutors direct access to the knowledge, information and contacts they need to identify counterfeit products and act effectively against this traffic, while reinforcing our commitment to supporting their enforcement actions directly on the ground.
The consistently high level of seizures in the region confirms the importance of maintaining this cooperation and meeting regularly with the authorities working on the ground. Eighteen years after our first conference here, the scale of the event has grown considerably, but its purpose remains the same: bringing rights holders and enforcement authorities together and making the fight against counterfeit goods entering the European Union as effective as possible.
