Last month, Belgium’s three regional governments announced that from 1 May next year, a road tax digital sticker ("vignette") will be required to drive on motorways and regional roads in Belgium.
The road stickers will be compulsory for all vehicles weighing up to 3.5 tonnes, whether registered in Belgium or abroad. The annual price will range from €90 to €125 euros, depending on the vehicle’s CO2 emissions. The idea behind the initiative is to make foreign cars contribute to the maintenance of Belgian roads.
But according to researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, the plans could violate EU law.
Pim Mertens and Martin Unfried told Het Laatste Nieuws that a ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2019 set a precedent which could make Belgium’s plans a non-starter.
A similar vignette system introduced in Germany was ruled to be illegal by the court, since local motorists were compensated through a reduction in their road tax. This difference in treatment was considered discriminatory towards foreign drivers, who also had to buy a vignette.
Mertens and Unfried believe the Belgian vignette could raise the same issue. "Because Minister Ben Weyts claims he wants to compensate the Flemish, it's possible the Court of Justice could also see this as discrimination," said Mertens.
An old idea makes a comeback
Belgium has come close to introducing a road vignette before, only to see plans crumble at the last minute – thanks in part to a Dutch intervention.
The introduction of a road vignette was included in the coalition agreement of the Flemish Government in 2004. Subsequently, the Brussels and Walloon Governments also expressed their support for the idea.
After much deliberation, the three regional governments agreed on the cost of the vignette and on the distribution of the income. The vignette was supposed to be introduced in 2009.
However, after legal objections that the road vignette might not pass the test of EU regulations and after strong criticism from the Netherlands, the Flemish Minister-President Yves Leterme (CD&V) at the time buried the idea in March 2007 during a visit to the Netherlands.
