400 open tickets: Swiss tourists do not pay for Italian buses

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Swiss tourists cause problems for the Italians. It is not enough that they do not follow local traffic rules during the holidays. Apparently they are in no hurry to pay the resulting fines.

In the municipality of Varese, not far from Lake Como in the north of the country, 404 of the 501 buses distributed to Swiss people this year had not been paid for at the end of November, writes ‘Tio.ch’.

In concrete terms, the Swiss had mainly received fines for parking bans, running red lights and speeding.

Tow truck in Como

“In theory, if you know where the person lives, you can send a payment request. “In practice, however, it is complicated to get the missing money back,” says Raffaele Catalano of the local police. He also trusts “people’s sense of citizenship”. Unlike the mayor of Como, he does not want to introduce specific punitive measures for Swiss citizens.

Alessandro Rapinese announced last year that he would organize tow trucks for illegal parkers with Swiss license plates. Because the fines were not paid here either, Como lost 300,000 euros annually.

In the summer of 2022, photos surfaced online showing a black Mercedes with Ticino license plates being towed onto a tow truck in the middle of Como’s old town. It was said that the tow truck was not a “special model for the Swiss” but rather came from the usual towing service. But Rapinese had kept his promise.

Switzerland is also hunting foreign speed offenders

However, it is not only the Swiss who do not want to pay their bills abroad. Even foreign speeders on Swiss roads do not always pay. Two years ago it was announced that 70 percent of foreigners caught on the streets in the canton of Nidwalden in recent years had not paid their fines.

In the canton of Geneva, more than 10,000 buses were sent in 2021 to countries further away than our neighboring countries. Only 3.3 percent of this was paid. (man)

Source: Blick