Foreign license plates cars are to be clamped

PUC ‘Parking Servis' begins as of today to clamp foreign license plates cars for which parking is not paid and which have at least two unpaid daily tickets in the zoned parts of Belgrade.

In accordance with the Decision of public car parks, drivers will be informed that their cars have been clamped with a notice in the daily ticket and a special warning sticker which will be put on their cars' windscreen so that they do not try to start and thus damage their vehicle. Clamping will be applied only to the vehicles with foreign plates because the Company has no other way of collecting debt, while the same rules as before will be applied to the cars with domestic license plates.

Andrija Čupković, PUC ‘Parking Servis' Acting Manager, says that not all the cars which are illegally parked will be clamped because everyone might be late once or twice or forget to pay. Only cars of owners who have accumulated a huge debt and it is obvious that they consciously and deliberately avoid paying for parking will be clamped. ‘These debtors are not tourists but people who live in Serbia and use foreign plates so as to avoid paying for parking and they have no intention of repaying their debt. Local plate drivers who regularly pay all their duties have so far been second rate citizens when compared to those ‘foreigners'. Clamping the vehicles with foreign plates is not some April's Fool prank and you will see it in action today. In this way we are going to regulate parking further and make equal vehicles with local and foreign plates because in Belgrade the same rule must apply to all. ‘Foreigners' owe to the City about 400 million dinars and with that amount of money, for example, an underground car park might have been built and they are necessary in order to solve the lack of parking space. I would also like once again to invite the owners of vehicles with local plates to avail of our debt relief scheme which expires on the 28th April. If the owner of the vehicle with a foreign plate has our residency they can also repay their debt in installments. They pay 30% of the debt when taking the vehicle and the remainder is paid in 6 or 12 monthly installments', says Čupković

Četvrtina svih naloga za plaćanje dnevnih karata, oko 500 svakog dana, izdata je vozilima sa stranim registarskim oznakama, a u poslednje tri godine kontrolori "Parking servisa" su im izdali oko 200.000 naloga. Dopunom Odluke o javnim parkiralištima, od 08. marta ove godine, „Parking servis" ima pravo da zadrži vozilo dužnika protiv koga nije moguće pokrenuti postupak za prinudnu naplatu dugovanja blokadom vozila lisica na opštem javnom parkiralištu i uklanjanjem vozila, na depo preduzeća.

A quarter of all daily tickets, around 500 every day, is issued to vehicles with foreign plates, and over the last three years ‘Parking Servis' attendants have issued to them about 200 000 tickets. The Amendment to the Decision of public car parks from 08th March 2014. gives ‘Parking Servis' the right to clamp the vehicle of an owner of the car with a foreign plate because there is no other way of collecting their debt. The vehicle will be clamped for 24 hours on a public parking space and then removed to the Company's depo.

The condition for removing the clamp is that the debtor pay the whole debt for the unpaid daily parking tickets to ‘Parking Servis' while clamping and de-clamping will not be charged. In case the car is towed away after 24 hours and moved to the Company's depo these services will not be charged either.

Clamping is a common practice in the cities in our neighborhood and Europe such as Banjaluka, Burgas, Budapest or London where the cars are clamped when the parking is not paid for. De-clamping is charged a few times more than the price of parking. In Rijeka the charge for de-clamping is about 9000 dinars. In Athens, the license plates are removed from the illegally parked cars.

The City of Belgrade is negotiating with the Police Department (MUP) about linking databases with the Customs' so as to prevent vehicles with foreign plates from leaving the territory of Republic of Serbia if they owe money for parking or if they have a committed a traffic violation. A system like this can be found in many European countries.

The biggest debtors in Belgrade over the last three years:

• 1 726 010 dinars owes a driver of a vehicle with the USA car plates
• 1 645 600 dinars owes a driver of a vehicle with Montenegro car plates

The number of orders for payment over the last three years:

• 31 541 orders - Montenegro plates
• 27 473 orders - Bosnia and Herzegovina plates
• 21 336 orders - Italian plates
• 18 891 orders - German plates
• 14 615 orders - French plates
• 10 985 orders - Slovenian plates
• 5 571 orders - Croatian plates
• 2 731 orders - Macedonian plates