Parking along the public road in Bruges, Ghent or Antwerp, but no money has been put into the parking meter? Then there is a good chance that you will find a parking ticket or parking fee from the municipality concerned in your mailbox a few days later.
Except if you drive a company car: then it sometimes takes several weeks before you receive that letter, because such a letter often has to be forwarded several times before it reaches the actual ‘offender’.
Privacy
This is now changing at the Flemish level. The Flemish Parliament approved a proposed decree on Wednesday that largely eliminates the administrative burden involved in processing parking fees for company cars.
(Read more below the photo)
File image of a parking fine. The driver of a company car will soon receive the voucher directly. — © Lisa Van Damme; LVD
Initiator Karin Brouwers (CD&V): “Flemish cities and municipalities today have no choice but to send the parking ticket to the holder of the license plate, which for company cars is the leasing company involved. The leasing company must then check who actually drives the leasing car in question, after which the driver – or sometimes also the company for which the driver works – can be informed. Complex and time-consuming.”
Police
The intention is that the Flemish municipalities will soon have access to the federal Vehicle Crossroads Bank, established in 2015 in collaboration with the judiciary and the federal police. Most of the leasing companies in our country record in that database who the so-called ‘usual driver’ of one of their company cars is. Today, this ensures that a speeding violation ends up directly with the usual driver, and not with the so-called license plate holder, i.e. the leasing company.
“Flemish cities and municipalities today have no choice but to send the parking ticket to the holder of the license plate, which for company cars is the leasing company involved”
Karin Brouwers
Flemish Member of Parliament (CD&V)
The decree approved today will soon make it possible that not only the judiciary and the police, but also local municipalities can request the identity of the driver of a company car from the federal database. “Advice has of course been requested from the Data Protection Authority, the former privacy committee,” Brouwers emphasizes.
Avoid extra costs
The vehicle rental federation Renta emphasizes that the new way of working also has advantages for the ‘offender’. “It can indeed take a while for such a parking fee to reach the actual driver,” says general manager Frank Van Gool.
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“After all, the parking ticket must reach the leasing company, in some cases it must first be forwarded to the employer in question, after which the company must deliver the ticket to the employee in question. As a result, it sometimes happens that, as an offender, you only have a few days left to pay before the parking company charges extra costs.”
Van Gool: “And by forwarding the parking ticket directly to the usual driver, the privacy of this driver is also better respected. After all, the employer no longer has access to who was where and when with the company car.”
