The flat-rate toll payment via vignettes will remain in Slovenia for several more years, as it is the promise of the current government, according to which vignettes for passenger vehicles would be replaced by satellite tracking of mileage and payment based on kilometers traveled as early as mid-2010, which is “completely unrealistic,” said Patrick Vlačič, the likely Minister of Transport in the future government of Borut Pahor, in an interview with the television station POP-TV.
Regarding the first warning from the European Commission to Slovenia that the system is discriminatory towards transit drivers because it does not provide for vignettes for shorter periods than six months, meaning that drivers who do not live in Slovenia actually pay more because they do not use the roads as much as Slovenians, Vlačič stated that the issue of “discrimination” is not decided by the European Commission but by the court, and that Slovenia needs to make a political decision on how to proceed regarding a possible lawsuit that could follow if Slovenia does not introduce vignettes for shorter periods.
Vlačič, however, shifted the blame for the current impasse with Brussels to the current government, stating that it made the decision on vignettes before the parliamentary elections due to domestic voters. By placing a greater burden on transit drivers, the price of a half-year vignette was set at 35 euros, and an annual one at 55 euros, he said. This price, Vlačič explained, is unrealistic because the government’s office for economic analysis stated that the economic price for an annual vignette should be at least between 150 and 200 euros.
