The Commission decided today to send Slovenia a letter of formal notice to stop discriminatory treatment of occasional users on Slovenian toll roads.

The letter of formal notice concerns amendments made by Slovenia in its transport law that entered into force in July. By introducing only annual and half-year vignettes for passenger cars and annual vignettes for motorcycles, these amendments particularly place foreign nationals or foreign residents occasionally using the motorway network in Slovenia in a worse position than nationals or Slovenian residents by lack of proportionately-priced charges for transit or shorter term usage of the motorway infrastructure.

Under European law any discrimination on the grounds of nationality are prohibited, including unequal treatment which is not explicitly tied to nationality but which by the application of other criteria of differentiation, leads in fact to the same result. The EU legal framework for road charging does not cover passenger cars or motorcycles and Member States can set up their own systems of tolling. Members States are however obliged to respect general principles enshrined in the EC Treaty.Since 1996, the European Commission has taken the same position vis-a-vis other Member States which introduced similar vignette systems, such as Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania. In taking this step, the Commission is also acting upon complaints it has received from European tourist organisations.

A letter of formal notice is the first formal step in the infringement procedure. Following the response fom the Slovenian authorities the Commission will decide on the further steps to be taken, including a seizing of the European Court of Justice as an ultimate step.