Illicit waste trade is now a front-line concern for the European Anti-Fraud Office, which hosted the second meeting of the Waste Shipment Enforcement Group in Brussels on 23 October 2026. The gathering brought enforcement authorities together just before a new restriction on plastic waste exports takes effect.
OLAF organised the meeting together with Dublin City Council’s waste regulation and enforcement team, which co-chairs the group. The group was set up in 2025, and its first meeting took place in Warsaw. That rotation between a Polish and an Irish host shows how enforcement now relies on local inspectors as much as on EU institutions.
The timing is not accidental, because illicit waste trade tends to surge whenever the rules change. The agenda centred on the new ban on exporting plastic waste to non-OECD countries, which the office says kicks in this November. Once the ban applies, shipments that were previously legal become violations overnight, and criminal networks that moved mislabelled plastic to Asia and Africa have a strong incentive to disguise their cargo.
Customs officers and environmental inspectors often struggle with the same practical question. When does a material count as waste, and when is it a legitimate by-product or a recovered raw material? The agenda addressed classification and control of waste, as well as the dividing line between end-of-waste status and by-products. That line decides whether a container can move freely or must be stopped at the port.
Repatriation also featured in the discussion of illicit waste trade. When illegal waste is intercepted abroad, someone has to pay to bring it back, and the exporting country often disputes responsibility. Coordinated rules on who acts, and how quickly, can determine whether a seizure ends in a clean-up or in a stalled legal dispute.
For OLAF, the work fits a wider pattern of using its customs expertise beyond classic budget fraud. Its recent activity includes an annual conference on tobacco smuggling held in Larnaca on 20 and 21 October, and a working arrangement with the anti-money-laundering authority signed on 21 October. Illicit waste trade shares the same logic. It is lucrative, cross-border and hard to detect from a single national vantage point.
The challenge is that the office has no power to inspect a container itself. It supports national authorities with analysis, intelligence and coordination, while member states carry out the seizures and prosecutions. A group like the Waste Shipment Enforcement Group therefore only works if inspectors share cases and share data quickly.
Businesses near illicit waste trade risks should read the signal clearly. Exporters of plastic scrap, recyclers and shipping agents should expect closer document checks once the November ban applies, and mislabelling will be treated as fraud rather than as a paperwork error. For legitimate operators, early classification advice from national authorities is the cheapest protection against costly delays.
Whether the new ban will curb illicit waste trade will depend on enforcement capacity at ports across the Union. The Brussels meeting suggests that authorities are preparing, but the first months after the ban takes effect will show how well that preparation holds up.
