Ljubljana - Slovenia having switched to e-vignettes on 1 February, the motorway company DARS has so far sold 748,800 e-vignettes, 91% of them annual. It has checked more than 100,000 vehicles to find over 5,000 suspected violations. In 1,356 of them the suspicion has been confirmed and the rest are yet to be checked.

The sale of e-vignettes has been running smoothly both online and at sale points, with around a quarter of users buying them online.

DARS warns that the only official online store for e-vignettes is https://evinjeta.dars.si. The company adds it has no power to intervene if users have problems or additional costs when they buy e-vignettes on other websites.

DARS has no contracts with any such providers, it stressed.

Just like the toll stickers that have been in use for the last 13 years, e-vignettes for cars and vans have the duration of a year, month or a week, and those for motorcycles for a year, six months or a week.

However, the validity of the annual e-vignette is no longer limited to the calendar year. Instead, it is valid for exactly one year, starting with the date that drivers choose themselves when they buy the e-vignette.

Another new feature is that drivers will now be able to claim back the unused value of their annual e-vignette (and the half-yearly one for motorcycles) when their vehicle is checked out of the traffic system. If they sell their vehicle, they will only be entitled to partial refund if the new owner does not register the vehicle with the same registration number.

Each e-vignette is linked to the licence plates of the vehicle for which it was purchased, and its validity is monitored by cameras installed all along the Slovenian motorway network, at checkpoints and in toll enforcement vehicles.

Both Slovenians and foreign citizens have been found to be violating the new rules.

If a vignette is recognised as valid, the system erases the data on the registration plate, but in case of a violation the data is stored, DARS said.