In May 2011, the then US President Barack Obama came to London and drove into the city center in his state car: right into the middle of the “Congestion Zone”, a “traffic jam zone” in which a fee is charged for every car. The congestion charge was introduced in 2003 by then mayor Ken Livingstone based on the Singapore model in order to reduce traffic in the city center; the US delegation would have had to pay ten pounds for each car. Ten pounds is of course ridiculous for a US delegation, but numbers are often a matter of principle. The Americans did not pay, although Livingstone’s successor Boris Johnson did not shy away from raising the issue at the banquet with Obama.
Boris Johnson is long gone, but the issue remains. The British government and the responsible transport authority Transport for London (TfL) recently published the current status of the “Congestion Charge”: The total outstanding invoices from all embassies in the British capital now amount to 143 million pounds.
The messages and the “Congestion Charge” are a curious, ongoing topic in London, but there is also a certain emotion underlying it, as always when ignorance and powerlessness seem to confront each other. TfL likes to emphasize that the fee, which is now £15 per vehicle per day, is an important part of environmental protection and that traffic in the city center has been reduced by more than ten percent. However, many embassies have been refusing to pay the fee and penalties for 20 years; the US embassy alone is now in arrears of 14.6 million pounds. They view the fee as a tax, which is why they should be exempt from it. And diplomats enjoy immunity, speeding tickets are not even ignored, environmental or not.
Even Ken Livingstone was extremely annoyed
This angered Johnson’s predecessor, Ken Livingstone, so much that he called the then US ambassador a “deceitful little crook.” The current mayor, Sadiq Khan, prefers not to say anything about it when asked by the SZ, but a TfL spokesman says that the debt level has been reported again to the Foreign Ministry. And adds somewhat helplessly: “Support from the government” is needed. But who wants to complicate diplomatic relations because of a dispute over a few pounds of car fees?
In the House of Commons it was now a written statement Published on the matter, it states with all available determination: One sees “no legal basis for an exception” and “expects” the embassies to pay their debts. To put it with all the clarity available, it is very unlikely that the expectation will be fulfilled. The Foreign Office in Berlin states succinctly and unequivocally that this is a tax from which embassies are exempt due to internationally valid agreements.
In the current debtor table Regarding the congestion charge, Germany is in tenth place with 4.6 million pounds, behind Kazakhstan and Ghana and ahead of Sudan and Kenya. The German embassy in London is located in Belgrave Square – just outside the toll zone.