As of January there was an amendment made to the allowance on which you are allowed to bring back cigarettes across the border from non Eu countries especially Turkey.

Well we've done it and survived but please be aware for recent changes to the law regarding cigarettes.
You are only allowed to bring back 40 cigs !!!! thats 2 single packets.
Luckily the ones that were purchased by us all we took them back to the duty shop and they gave us our money back thankfully.
Here is the amended article as published in Novinite news.


Bulgaria Limits Non-EU Duty-free Tobacco Allowances
Bulgaria in EU | January 22, 2010, Friday


Bulgaria's Customs Agency announces an immediate decrease in personal duty-free tobacco allowances for travelers from non-EU countries. Photo by BGNES
The Bulgarian Customs Agency has announced on Friday that, with immediate effect, new limits have been imposed on personal imports of tobacco products by travelers from outside the European Union.

They will be restricted to free import limits of 40 normal cigarettes or 10 cigars or 20 cigarillos or 50 gm smoking tobacco.

The new limits apply to people passing through land, sea and river borders with non-EU countries. For Bulgaria, this includes Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey.

For passengers traveling by air, the duty-free limits remain unchanged: 200 cigarettes or 50 cigars or 100 cigarillos, or 250 gm smoking tobacco.

The Customs Agency stated that a reduction of thresholds for the import of tobacco products is necessary because of their low prices in neighboring non-EU countries.

The goal is to eliminate the practise of importing large quantities of cigarettes by repeatedly crossing the state border, with those cigarettes then being sold illegally on the domestic market.

Duty thresholds are unchanged for alcoholic beverages transported by land, sea or river borders. Passengers may carry one liter of alcohol and two liters of beverages with an alcohol content less than 22%. There is no limit for still wines and beers.

I wonder if we could go Turkey Greece then Bulgaria,have to give it a go

Hmmmmm now theres an idea !!!
Better wait till Greece settles down a bit though it's still volatile at the moment.
Mind you if we flew to T :Angel2:urkey we could have got 200 each lol

We were asked to bring tobacco back for a friend, we thought we would buy this at the Luton Airport going out as had a problem last time getting tobacco in BG. We were not allow to buy in Luton if we are traveling to BG because it was a green country or something like that, unfortunately I did not have enough time to go into details with the assistant at the time but sh refused to sell the tobacco. Anyone else experience this??

By the way we did find tobacco in the gypsy market in Varna only brought back one pack just in case it was not the real stuff.

Oddy

Hi Oddy, apparently if you are coming from the Uk into BG then the allowance is 200 cigarettes but the HMRC website will or should give you the information required.
but unfortunately the people that run the likes of the duty shops do not update their staff on current situations
that seems to be the biggest problems assistants not knowing what is the current legislation.
jenny

Thanks Jenny I will have a look at that later. I have told our friend that I will only bring back what is allow when we can, the only problem is, they will expect it all the time now

Oddy

remember, the only beer wines or spirits you can bring are what you buy at the airport or on the plane , if you buy anywhere else it will be taken off you, as you cannot bring liquid of any sort. we know, we had our cheap whiskey confiscated.