Analytics, Custom, Latvia, Shadow economy

"On the whole, the situation has remained unchanged," the customs chief said. 

Zukuls indicated that as traffic restrictions were introduced because of Covid-19, the traffic of contraband goods across the European Union's external border slowed a bit for a while, but already in May and June it was back to the pre-crisis level.

At the same time, Zukuls noted that the number of attempts to smuggle undeclared cash across the state border decreased in the first half of this year as the traffic of people to and from non-EU countries was restricted.

In the first half of 2020, there were four cases were persons had tried to cross the state border with undeclared cash, down from 20 cases in the first half of last year, Zukuls said.