Europe cracks down on illegal e-bike imports

October 2, 2025

In June 2025, European prosecutors detained more than 2,400 shipping containers in the Greek port of Piraeus, with over 500 of them packed with e-bikes, which investigators said were misdeclared, undervalued, or only partially declared. In May, Irish customs officers searched two warehouses in Wexford and uncovered more than 4,000 illegally imported e-bikes, which were subject to significant unpaid duties. Two months earlier, in March, French authorities conducted an “unprecedented” warehouse raid, which discovered some 7,000 Chinese-made illegally imported e-bikes stored across multiple sites, after a months-long inquiry into false paperwork and shell companies.

These investigations are only a few of the ones conducted and prosecuted this year, and the latest in the continuing, years-long cat-and-mouse game over e-bikes entering the EU illegally. While the rules are in place to combat the problem, some industry sources say they are not necessarily enforced at a pace that is required by the industry. Escape Collective