Foreign Cars Face Clamps for Illegal Parking

Belgrade’s official regulators Parking Service started clamping vehicles with foreign license plates that have more than two unpaid tickets on April 1st. The clamps will remain on the vehicles until the drivers pay all their unpaid parking tickets.

Until now, Parking Service has not been able to deal with illegally parked cars with foreign plates because their owners were not listed in the Serbian police registry so the vehicles could not be moved.

Anyone whose car is clamped will find a note on their windshield with information about their debt and a warning that they could damage their vehicle if they try to remove the clamp.

The biggest debtors in the last three years are the owners of a vehicle with US licence plate whose parking tickets amounted to €15,000 and a owner of a vehicle with Montenegrin plates who owes about €14,000.

According to Andrija Cupkovic, acting director of Parking Service, drivers of vehicles with foreign licence plates owe about €3.4 million for unpaid parking tickets in the last three years.

Cupkovic said that more than 500 tickets are issued daily for vehicles with foreign licence plates, while in the last three years about inspectors issued over 200,000 tickets.

Since 2011, about 31,500 tickets have been issued for cars with Montenegrin plates, about 27,400 for Bosnian, 21,300 for Italian, 18,800 for German, 14,600 for French, and about 11,000 for cars with Slovenian plates.

“These are not all foreigners, but local citizens who used to take advantage of the legal loophole and the fact that we weren’t able to establish their identity, so they abused the system for years,” said Cupkovic.

He added that not all vehicles issued parking tickets will be clamped, only those whose...