Rules pertaining to the specification of environmental protection categories to tighten in Hungary

Carriers are obligated to act by July.

As of 1 July 2021, National Toll Payment Services Plc. (NTPS Plc.) will automatically classify goods motor vehicles with a gross weight over 3.5 tonnes, registered in the HU-GO system and with a foreign country code, into the lowest environmental protection category, where carriers cannot provide satisfactory evidence of their vehicle’s environmental protection category. Those concerned have one month to provide the expanded scope of mandatory registration data (make, year of manufacture, VIN number) in their HU-GO profile, and to upload the vehicle document stating the vehicle’s environmental category. The tightening primarily aims to improve the enforcement of the “polluter pays” principle.
The environmental protection category is one of the elements of determining the toll payable for road usage by goods motor vehicles with a gross weight of over 3.5 tonnes. Its specification—the correct provision of necessary data and the substantiation thereof with certified documentation—is an essential criterion of ensuring that toll on Hungarian roads is paid in line with the rate of environmental pollution and pollutant emissions for each goods motor vehicle.
“While in the case of goods motor vehicles with a Hungarian country code, NTPS Plc. is able to verify the environmental protection category in Hungarian public vehicle registers, this is currently not possible for vehicles with foreign country codes. The polluter »pays principle«, however, applies to all, which is why we have made it mandatory—pursuant to our General Terms and Conditions—to provide the expanded scope of mandatory registration data (make, year of manufacture, VIN number) and to upload the vehicle document stating the vehicle’s environmental category in the HU-GO profile,” said National Toll Payment Services, CEO Tamás Bartal.
He went on to add: “We are asking foreign carriers to check—in the month ahead—whether they have provided the data as requested and uploaded the documents needed, and if they have not done so yet, to provide and upload these. We are also asking customers to delete vehicles that are no longer owned by them from their HU-GO profile. We are, of course, informing everyone of the above, both directly and indirectly.”
Detailed information pertaining to the environmental protection category is available on the hugo.hu website, where the means of providing the aforementioned data and uploading documents is demonstrated in a tutorial video.
Goods motor vehicles with a foreign country code registered in the HU-GO system, for which the above obligations are not fulfilled by carriers will automatically be reclassified by NTPS Plc. into the lowest environmental protection category (Category “C”, “EURO 0” in the HU-GO system) as of 1 July 2021, and will be kept in this category until the carriers concerned remedy the deficiencies. Similar regulations are encountered frequently internationally as well, for example in Austria, the Czech Republic or Slovakia.
NTPS Plc.’s control system detects 120-130,000 goods motor vehicles with foreign country codes on Hungarian toll roads each month, and while most of these have already provided the mandatory data requested and uploaded the documents needed, the rule applies to all registered foreign vehicles.