Poland is demanding hundreds of millions of euros in retroactive customs duties, VAT, anti-dumping levies and penalties from European rail logistics companies — for shipments Polish authorities themselves scanned and cleared years ago at Małaszewicze. In several cases, the claimed amounts exceed the total asset value of the targeted firms, according to CLECAT, the European Association of Freight Forwarding, Transport and Customs Services.

Four industry bodies — CER, CLECAT, FIATA and the combined transport association UIRR — sent a joint letter to the European Commission in August demanding urgent intervention. Their concern centres on rail imports moved through Małaszewicze, the main Chinese-container gateway on the EU's eastern rail border, between 2021 and 2026. An EU investigation found retrospectively that some of these shipments were fraudulent. The goods had originally been scanned and cleared by Polish customs.

One case that surfaced only years after the initial customs procedure involved e-bikes declared as spinning bikes, a misclassification designed to evade anti-dumping duties. By the time the fraud came to light, the importers and warehouse operators actually responsible had vanished or gone bust. Poland cannot recover duties, VAT or penalties from them.

So Polish authorities have shifted the liability onto the supply chain instead. Their reasoning: the parties that moved the goods are jointly liable for their customers' fraud. The net covers freight forwarders, railway undertakings, border agents, temporary storage authorisation holders and customs agents — none of whom carry legal responsibility for customs verification. Poland is also demanding years of accumulated interest on top of the principal claims, CLECAT reports.

Punishment without detection capability

The associations' core objection is that Poland is pursuing companies regardless of whether they had any means to detect the fraud. The division of labour in EU customs is clear: market operators manage logistics and paperwork; public authorities handle verification and enforcement. "If this division is altered after the fact because the actual perpetrators are no longer accessible, European logistics companies will struggle to manage, price, or insure against liability risks for fraudulent acts they lacked the legal authority or means to identify," the signatories write.

In effect, they argue, Poland's approach assigns liability to whichever business remains solvent — solely because it is still reachable within the EU.

Insolvency risk before appeal

The commercial consequences for rail and forwarding operators on the China–Europe corridor are severe. Total sector exposure runs into hundreds of millions of euros, CLECAT believes. Several companies risk insolvency before Polish courts have even examined their cases, and appeals can take up to five years.

The associations warn of a wider systemic effect: few, if any, customs service providers will be willing to make customs declarations at the EU's external borders without Commission intervention. The result would be severe congestion at border crossings — Małaszewicze being the single most critical node for rail freight entering the EU from China and Belarus.

For carriers and forwarders still active on the New Silk Road corridors, the cases rewrite the risk calculus. Liability that could not be priced or insured at the time of shipment is being imposed years later, with interest. For shippers, the risk is that operators withdraw from border customs services, tightening capacity at exactly the point where rail's competitiveness against ocean depends on smooth clearance.

Commission asked to draw the line

The letter's signatories frame the dispute as a fundamental question of responsibility allocation: Poland appears to want supply chain actors to absorb the cost of a fraud-detection failure by the Polish authorities themselves. They are pressing the Commission to intervene and restore legal certainty for logistics operators operating under EU customs law.

The outcome will set a precedent for how retroactively discovered fraud is allocated across the EU's external borders — and whether operators on the China–Europe rail trade can continue to offer border services without open-ended liability exposure.