MThis amazing journey began two years ago when friends and acquaintances visiting London faced hefty fines amounting to thousands of euros for allegedly breaching London’s emission zone regulations.
A letter accompanying the penalty accused them of entering the city’s low-emission zone (rez) without paying a daily fee. Lez primarily targets large heavy commercial vehicles, and users who violate the law can be fined up to £2,000 a day. The twist? My friend was in a family car. In addition, the company’s vehicles were compliant with the automotive sister system Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez). Belgium has had its own Urez system for many years, so most people own cars that comply with emissions regulations.
It turns out that overseas drivers must register their vehicles with Transport for London’s (TfL) debt collection agency, Euro Parking Corrections, 10 days before entering London. If not, he will be charged a fee of £12.50 per day for older, more polluting vehicles. However, foreign drivers were not informed of this when booking their travel tickets or at the main entry points into the UK and London. A perfect trap has been set for unsuspecting foreign drivers, who will be fined even if their car meets Urez standards. Adding insult to injury, these fines issued by Euro Parking often arrived months after the date stamp, well past the 28-day 50% discount.
Initially, I doubted my influence over Britain’s transport pricing system. But as the complaints escalated, so did my resolve. The situation reached a tipping point when a friend was fined a staggering £4,500 for a three-day visit to London. I have asked the Belgian Parliament about the legality of these fines post-Brexit. The Transport Minister’s response was surprising. Post-Brexit, there is no legal basis for sharing personal data with the UK for non-criminal offenses such as Ulez violations.
Attempts to contact Euro Parking via email and letter were met with silence. They must have hoped it would go away, but they picked the wrong man to interfere.
I contacted the EU Privacy Commissioner and the Belgian Data Protection Authority and found they were powerless against the UK company. Similarly, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office has stated that its only mandate is to protect the data of British citizens.
This story changed dramatically when I filed a Freedom of Information request with DIV, the Belgian motor vehicle licensing authority. The findings were surprising. Euro Parking was denied direct access to the Belgian driver’s details and hired a local court bailiff to access the database more than 26,000 times, passing the driver’s name and address to Euro Parking.
Court bailiffs can match details of specific drivers to enforce court judgments. Searching the database is not allowed. Of course, we are not allowed to share information with UK companies.
In search of hard evidence, I deliberately didn’t pay the Dartford Crossing toll the next time I visited London. Six months later, I received the expected penalty. This gave me the power I needed to solve the mystery.
I made a ‘subject access request’ to DIV, asking who had asked for my details and confirming the illegal collaboration between the bailiff and Euro Parking.
Following my investigation, the Belgian authorities took action. The bailiff’s access to the driver database was suspended, criminal charges were brought, and the Belgian embassy issued a warning on behalf of TfL about the data breach. Belgian drivers were informed that they did not have to pay these invalid fines and I wrote to the Mayor of London, but received no response.
However, Belgian drivers continue to be fined. Europarking has discovered a new way to access Belgian drivers’ data. This time, it was through an Italian agency that has access to the EU’s license plate sharing system, Eucharis. Again, the UK is no longer participating in this and therefore cannot legally receive driver details for civil enforcement purposes. Italian authorities were notified and agents were prohibited from entering. It became a relentless game of cat and mouse.
With Belgium currently holding the EU Council Presidency, I am calling on the Government to seek a pan-European solution and recover hundreds of thousands of pounds in fines that appear to have been collected illegally. I did.
While it is easy to dismiss data protection issues as a niche concern, the human cost of this exploitation is significant. Many Belgians are now reluctant to visit family in the UK for fear of being fined. There have also been instances of Euro Parking enforcement officers knocking on doors over unpaid illegal fines. London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that although London is reopening, prices are very high as far as Belgium is concerned.
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Michael Freilich has been a member of the Belgian parliament representing Antwerp since 2019.