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Greek drivers refuse to pay toll fees, companies concessionaires are looking for a way to collect the lost revenues

08 January 2011 / 11:01:00  GRReporter
9593 reads

At this point, and based on the law from 2007 the state can not do anything. It chooses to stand aside and not intervene. The police can not intervene as well because the refusal to pay the toll is not a violation of the traffic or criminal offense. This is a purely civil dispute between private individuals and private companies. The only way fror them to require the amounts to be paid is to assert claims against drivers who do not pay at the cash registers. The reason that so far they have done nothing lies precisely in the fact that the law does not protect them. They have no legal basis, which obliges us to pay tolls.

How do you explain your stand?

We defend the right which the Constitution gives us to travel freely on the roads. As I already mentioned we have paid for them a thousand times, since the times of our parents and grandparents. Moreover, construction of the roads has not even been finished, although tolls are collected in advance. Let me mention for example the so-called main road Corinth-Patra. This is the most dangerous road in Europe in which hundreds of accidents happen. And yet there as well they require us to pay tolls, under the pretext that using these funds the road will be built. Nowhere in the world exists the practice of collecting fees before a road is built. Build it first and then let's see whether you have the right to collect toll fees.

Not to mention that the Greek roads do not meet EU requirements for imposing tolls. We also pay very high annual fees for the traffic. Why do we pay them? To be able to travel on the road.

In Germany, for example there is no toll for cars. They only apply for heavy-freight vehicles, because they cause damage to the asphalt. Toll are not collected neither in Holland nor in the Scandinavian countries. And the prices of the charges in Greece surpassed also those in Italy, where they were the highest, because their roads are in excellent condition. Ie our country leads the list for the highest tolls in Europe, while our revenues per capita are the lowest.

As far as I understand you do not intend to stop the protest.

Under no circumstances. We are determined not to pay toll ever again, regardless of what consequences that choice of ours could have. We also disregard completely the threats made to us by companies concessionaires in an attempt to make us pay. They benefit from the concession contracts, the state does nothing because it cannot do anything, and citizens are forced to pay all the time. The time has come, when we "woke up", we began to protest and we declare that "we won’t pay". This stand of ours is completely fair.

 

Tags: society protest toll fees
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