86 percent paid, 50 percent unpaid: what collection data says about fine risk

Belgium has processed more than 5.3 million traffic fines for drivers registered in other EU countries since 2021. The average collection rate is around 67 percent, but the average hides the interesting part. Belgian residents pay 90 percent, Dutch drivers 86 percent, Luxembourg and Germany 86 and 80 percent. French drivers received over 1.5 million tickets and about half of them were never paid.

What drives the difference

It is not willingness alone. The Netherlands and Belgium are connected through EUCARIS, the European vehicle and driving licence information system, so a Belgian authority can pull a complete name and address for a Dutch plate almost immediately. Documents are generated automatically, sent in the driver's own language, and if the fine is ignored the file can be handed to the Dutch CJIB for enforced collection.

With France the chain breaks earlier. Address data is not always complete or synchronised, so the authority cannot always identify or contact the owner. The case stalls before payment is even discussed. That is the mechanism to understand: collection depends on a data handover, not on the seriousness of the offence.

Why a fleet should care about collection rates

A fleet is not the offender, but it is often the registered owner, so it sits at the start of that chain. Where the chain works, a case moves quickly and the fleet has a short window to identify the driver and transfer or recharge. Where the chain is slow, the case arrives late with a deadline that has partly run, and the fleet absorbs the cost.

The collection rate is therefore a useful planning number. A market with high compliance produces fast, well-documented cases that need a quick match. A market with low compliance produces late, incomplete cases that need investigation. Both create work, but not the same work.

What to review

Review the average time between offence date and the date the document reaches your intake, per country. Then check how many cases arrive with less than half of the original deadline left. That second number is the real measure of whether the process has enough time to identify a driver, and it is usually higher than teams expect.

A practical next step

Sort last year's cases by country and calculate the share that was closed by transfer, by payment and by write-off. Countries where write-offs cluster are not necessarily the expensive ones, but they are the ones where the driver match or the documentation fails first.

Your fine management, fine-tuned.