A person, who comes for some time to the EU - for education, business or tourist purposes, very often brings a very expensive electronic equipment. A student needs a laptop, as same as the businessman, and the sightseer needs a camera. Many people go abroad by their own car, by which they intend to return home. To be exempt from custom charges, it is enough to verbally declare to the customs officer that the transported equipment is brought for one's personal use only.
Most obviously, the officers stay alert. It would not be a problem to carry one or two cameras, but the different case is when one transports many items, what suggests trade purposes. A custom's officer will not believe that five factory-sealed laptops are needed by us for the personal use. All the items that we declared for personal use, have to be brought back when returning to one's mother country.
But what to do in case if our gear was stolen? That fact has to be reported to the police. The sooner they know, the more probably we get our goods back. Secondly, the file we get from the police, will allow us to cross the border without any problems. It is advisable to translate the content of the certificate of theft, especially if we lost our equipment not in Poland but in a different EU member state.
A sworn translator is able to help us and he is the person you should turn to, right after leaving the police station. You can easily locate a translator through the web:
www.tlumacze.ms.gov.pl The price of such a service is usually about 30-100 PLN (depending on the language of translation, as well as the length of the file). It is good to protect oneself in that formal manner, even if we travel with a person who knows well the languages of concern. For further details, go to the translations section.
Legal basis: The board disposition (WE) Nr 274/2008 dated to 17 March 2008 changing disposition (EWG) number 918/83 enacting the law of the common system of exempting from customs charges.
