After a long-standing dispute between Germany and Italy, German drivers can once again be fined if they break traffic rules while in Italy. This is reported by Spiegel.
Germany and Italy have agreed to further share data on vehicles and their owners, including the fines imposed on those vehicles, the Federal Road Transport Agency announced.
Since the data exchange started again in the popular German tourist town of Merano in South Tyrol alone, 230,000 euros in fines have accrued to German car owners.
This is thanks to the system for automatically recording violations. Violators can now be sent penalty notices and will have to pay them. Other cities where German drivers most often break traffic rules are Rome, Bolzano and Florence.
The reason other countries - not just Germany, but also Austria and the Netherlands - argued with Italy about sharing data on vehicle owners was that Italy was not using the system to check for other offenders.
Italy's transport minister, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, recently explained the dispute as "technical problems in the system" which have apparently now been resolved. The German agency has now confirmed that data sharing is happening again and has resumed since last week.