The Dutch government has announced that its motorists will be charged .03 of a euro for every kilometre they drive after 2012 - with a built-in tax escalator increasing the tariff every year until 2018.
Although the Dutch have taken an early lead on satellite tolling, it is widely accepted in the European Commission that road pricing will provide the revenues to pay for its multi-billion-euro project to launch the GALILEO satellite network, so the pressure will surely be intense for other European nations to follow suit. Yep, so that means us then.
In official 'EC speak', VERT, (or the Vehicular Remote Tolling project) is: 'an EC sponsored commercial consortium designed to exploit the capabilities offered by EGNOS, and later on GALILEO, to create road tolling-related applications that are sustainable from the economic and social point of view, either for enhancing the Road Tolling services or for introducing new added value services,' etc. etc. etc.
Suffice to say the VERT consortium has been working out the systems for some years, in readiness for when the troubled Galileo project goes live (apparently) in 2013.
Here at PH, we are looking forward to getting our chance to vote on the subject of enforced satellite tracking and tolling when it inevitably arrives back on the agenda in the UK.
Eh? What do you mean, we won't get a vote...
(N.B. The author is a member of Curmudgeonly Eurosceptics Anonymous)
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