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Speed demons from outside Belgium rarely fined
Drivers with foreign licence plates in Belgium caught by speed cameras almost never receive a fine in the mailbox. The prosecutor's office in Halle-Vilvoorde sees 'no point' in enforcing the fines, according to autofans.be.
The prosecutor's office last year acknowledged that it could not process eight out of 10 traffic offences by foreign drivers. According to the office, the speed checks provide insufficient personal data about the drivers, such as date and place of birth. Without this information it is impossible to follow up on an unpaid fine, so there is “no point in sending one,” says district attorney Gilles Blondeau.
The liberal police union VSOA says the problem is not due to a lack of personal data, but to a lack of personnel to process the claims. “Many prosecutors simply don't have enough time to follow up on all the fines, so they are forced to make choices,” explains a VSOA spokesperson. “Therefore we miss out on the collection of several hundred thousands of euros every year, money that could be used to hire additional staff.”
Comments
Well, cross border follow up of traffic fines is only legally permitted for serious traffic offences, and when the fine is over 70 Euro. To top this, you need to enter the request to a service designated by the Member State you want to pick your money from, and it is this Member State that then gets the money, not Belgium. And you would have to translate all documents into the language of this Member State, and fill a 9 page form. This is simply too much work to be of interest. To my knowledge, only the Netherlands do that systematically, the Belgians already fail in the first round, delivering the a PV in a language the foreign driver can understand. And Dutch is not becoming a language understood everywhere in Europe, whatever the Flemish nationalists think.
Also, Belgium (like the Netherlands) thinks that if they have a photo of the licence plate, they can charge the car owner. My country says "no evidence at all", you need to prove that the owner is the actual driver on this occasion. Can be done - they do it all the time. But the Belgians are simply to lazy to identify the driver, and then the presumption of innocence sets in.