Europe’s FTZs and SEZs in September 2026: The FTZ News Review

FTZ News spent September on Europe’s zones, and the Europe page, checked Oct. 5, still had those items up. The “load more” button did not open the rest of the file. This is what the site showed.

Poland was the rule story. On Sept. 29 the site said the special economic zones run out Dec. 31 and that Warsaw is rewriting the investment-zone rules. An older headline called it a quiet end. A Sept. 16 infographic said investment at Kostrzyn-Slubice had nearly tripled, to €481.3 million.

On Sept. 28 the World Bank and the European Union looked at Latgale’s special zones in Daugavpils. Andris Skrastiņš, of the Commission’s regional staff, was named in the blurb. On Sept. 22 Trieste Shipyards Srl said it plans to build and service megayachts on an industrial quay. On Sept. 11 Belarus added 37 hectares to the Minsk free economic zone, four parcels, by government order.

Older Europe items were still on the homepage. On Aug. 29 Travelodge’s first Cádiz hotel was going up inside the free-trade zone. A Bosnia piece said the new free zone was less about cheap land than about Europe’s border. One analysis asked what is known about EU sanctions on Russia’s special economic zones. Another said the Czech Republic’s two remaining free-trade zones were fading. An infographic asked which EU countries have no free-trade zones. The EU-Mercosur deal was written up as a free-trade zone from the northern hemisphere to the southern one. Latvian ports, in a separate item, were teaming up on a digital upgrade at Liepaja. On July 11 the site said Italy had folded its southern zones into ZES Unica, covering Sicily, Sardinia, Campania, Apulia, Calabria, Basilicata, Molise, Abruzzo, Marche and Umbria. The tax credit for 2026–2028 was confirmed, about €4 billion in all, €2.3 billion of it for 2026.

The same Europe page also carried early October copy: a $67 million drug plant opening in Pirallahi on Oct. 5, a €50 million Leopard plant in Lithuania’s Kaunas zone on Oct. 4, ports hunting private money on Oct. 2, Britain’s vaping duty and a Freeport payment hold on Oct. 1, Celtic Freeport joining a National Grid hookup program the same day, and a $4 million Liepaja cleanup of a former steelworks, nine heavy-fuel tanks, capacity cut off in the blurb.

September, on this site, was Poland closing the old zones, a World Bank visit in Latvia, a yacht yard in Trieste and a land add in Minsk. The site did not say the list was complete./.