How Brexit could help you avoid speeding fines on the continent

Hundreds of thousands of speeding fines handed out to British drivers in Europe every year could become a relic of the past after Brexit saw UK motorists exempted from agreements governing motoring offences on the continent.

Britain’s departure from the EU means the bloc’s cross-border enforcement directive no longer applies to UK drivers.

Under that agreement, signed by the UK in 2017, foreign police forces could request information about drivers caught breaking driving rules. However, the end of the transition period saw Britain leave the enforcement directive, meaning an “end to of sharing information about drivers who are caught on speed cameras”, the Daily Express reports.

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In practice, says The Times, this means that owners of British-registered vehicles “will no longer be sent fines” after they have left the country in which the offence took place. It also means that “British police will not be able to dispatch fines to European motorists caught by speed cameras or committing other offences in the UK”, the paper adds.

More than 444,000 British motorists were fined for offences filmed by roadside cameras in France alone last year, ahead of Belgian drivers with 295,899, Spaniards with 262,012 and Germans on 249,291. France stands to lose up to €60m (£53.4m) in unpaid British motoring fines a year, according to Caradisiac, a specialist French motoring site.

The French government is keen to negotiate a new bilateral agreement with Britain that will allow fines to be sent from one country to the other. But The Times says that French officials “fear that Britain will drag its heels” over a future arrangement.

If Britons are thinking about speeding while holidaying abroad, they should be aware they can still be issued with on-the-spot penalties. In France, drivers “travelling at 50km/h or more above the speed limit they can also have their vehicle seized”, The Telegraph adds.