Bulgaria’s road agency: More than half of those caught without ‘e-vignettes’ were foreigners
About 1400 motorists were caught on Bulgaria’s major roads over the Orthodox Easter weekend driving without having paid the “e-vignette” road toll tax, more than half of them foreigners, the Road Infrastructure Agency said.
Close to 30 000 vehicles were checked by the National Toll Inspectorate between April 25 and 29 2019, the agency said.
A total of 1188 “compensatory tax” levies were issued to offenders, of which 707 were to cars with foreign registration numbers. The largest number of offenders were in cars, a total of 1119, of whom 680 were foreigners.
Between April 25 and 29, a total of 136 590 e-vignettes were sold, totalling more than 5.7 million leva (about 2.85 million euro).
The largest number, 38 432 – totalling close to 1.6 million leva – were bought on April 26.
Of the e-vignettes sold, 114 394 were for passenger cars (more than 4.6 million leva) and 22 196 (more than a million leva) were for heavy goods vehicles.
Bulgaria introduced the e-vignette system in January 2019. The system was plagued by serious teething troubles, including a shortage of equipment to sell the e-vignettes, and shortcomings in functionality. The problems led to the resignations of senior members of the Road Infrastructure Agency.
