Every country in the European Union is struggling with a common issue: the identification and effective prosecution of foreign traffic offenders. The European Directive 2015/413 addresses these needs by facilitating the exchange of information on the identity of traffic offenders, as well as the enforcement of penalties for offences across national borders. Based on this European directive to build better road safety, the Crossborder Fines project was launched in 2017 as a collaboration and co-creation between the public sector and private partners.
The European directive imposes a uniform framework on the Member States to harmonise the international systems to facilitate the exchange of information at a European level. A thorough digitisation and centralisation of the national processes and systems for the management and processing of fines is crucial in this regard. The core business of the Crossborder Fines, therefore, consists of centralising and digitising the management and processing of traffic fines from end to end, in cooperation with the different stakeholders. This extends from the establishment of the offence by the police and the prosecution by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, to the provision of services to Belgian or European citizens or enterprises.
From 2020 onwards, Crossborder Fines will also digitise the processes for other criminal offences, including violations of the corona measures, shoplifting and drugs. By ensuring an effective and consistent criminal law enforcement and execution of financial penalties, Crossborder aims to play a role in restoring public confidence in the police and the judiciary. Road safety is a European story that can only succeed through extensive national and European cooperation. Crossborder Fines is therefore taking a pioneering role in this European story with the implementation of the e-CODEX platform in Belgium. This enables Member States to digitally exchange any unpaid fines issued to foreign offenders.
Crossborder Fines ensures better traffic safety by focusing on more efficient criminal enforcement at national and international (cf. e-CODEX platform) levels. The project team also developed various dashboards based on a business intelligence tool, making it possible to tackle recidivism more quickly and efficiently. These dashboards also provide reliable statistics at any time, which can be used to formulate more evidence-based policies.