The problem is that especially inside the EU, bikes are stolen almost in bulk, then loaded into trucks and taken outside the country - even if you get stopped at the border(which is super rare, thanks to the Schoengen zone), it's impossible to check the serial numbers of the bikes - if there are any databases, they are usually not ran by the police, and there are absolutely zero international databases for bikes. Eastern parts of EU are full of German, French, English bikes - where do you think they come from? I bet 90% of them were stolen, and the chance of recovering such bike is zero.
I live in Slovenia which is commonly considered east EU. Guess what, bikes get stolen here as well (not sure I know any cyclist who hasn't had one stolen at some point).
To put things into perspective, maybe he's right in saying that bikes get moved over the border to facilitate the resale. Your stolen bikes probably end up here in Germany. It's the EU single market. :) On general principle Germany tends to export more than it imports, not sure if that also applies to stolen goods. ;)
I doubt the thieves go to so much trouble, though, I expect my bikes that got stolen -- happened a few times -- ended up resold in the same city or in a neighbouring town. Wouldn't be totally shocked to recognize my own (well, formerly) bike in the local classifieds.
Yup. Much of the bikes that get stolen around here (Prague, central Europe) are re-sold considerably cheaper at shady shops within the same city. Of course, the statistic comes from bikes which have been recovered; this may significantly skew it.
I know, because I come from Eastern EU myself. But I can see what the market is like - there is plenty of "imported" German bikes around. And I have trouble believing that Germans are selling nice bikes for close to nothing. And like Morsch said in the comment below - our stolen bikes end up exported to the West, or maybe further to the east. My point is that within the EU it's really easy to move goods across borders,and then they become untraceable.
I can assure you that people in eastern Europe, the Czech republic at least, also do complain about having their nice new bikes stolen. Just to put things into perspective, eastern EU is not some wild west.
Agreed, but in Western Europe it is party time for criminals from Eastern Europe. Just read this (left-leaning and pro-european) newspaper article: http://bit.ly/1q6fWur
In France there's Bicycode. The sole increase in risk of a bike being visibly tagged vs one that is not is enough to make the baddies pick the other one.
Also there are actually two types of bicycle thiefs: organised groups that load them by the truckload and opportunistic folks that know most locks are trivially broken and just want a cheap ride. You'd be surprised how many times I witnessed guys just carelessly dropping "their" bike once arrived.
