Electronic-vignette for the Swiss Highways is coming

The electronic vignette for the Swiss cars, final result: glued – or not?

How many will convert from the sticker to the electronic version?

Every car driving on any Swiss road has to show a yearly, valid road tax sticker in the front windshield, tourists driving through Switzerland have to purchase it before traveling or acquire it at the border before entering Switzerland.

Finally done with the gluing, finally no more tedious scratching off the car window: there are very practical arguments with which the Federal Council is promoting the e-vignette for the motorway. Instead of a sticker to stick on, vehicle owners will also be able to buy an electronic version in the future. According to the National Council, the Council of States is also likely to give the green light this week for the introduction. Well-known resistance is only from the ranks of the Swiss People’sParty.

For its part,

the Federal Council plans to introduce the e-vignette in 2022. The responsible finance minister Ueli Maurer (SVP) praised it as citizen-friendly. After all, the e-vignette is linked directly to the control plate by registration, it can be ordered online at any time and does not cause any additional effort when changing vehicles or changing license plates.

The e-vignette

is sold via an app called Via. Motorists still pay the usual CHF 40 for it. Thanks to the electronic version, the federal government wants to cut its operating costs massively; Four francs it costs per vignette today for each print. The remaining proceeds will be used for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the national roads.

Of course, the sticker should not completely disappear. 

That is why, following a move by CVP (Christian Democratic People’s Party) National Councilor Martin Candinas, he is now proposing an “either-or” solution. Citizens should choose between the traditional and digital versions. Automated checks/controls on the national highways are not planned. The National Council’s Preparatory Transport Commission spoke out narrowly in favor of allowing controls only on a random basis and using mobile devices.

According to the Federal Council, the e-vignette is also not a preliminary stage for mobility pricing; the price model, according to which you have to pay more if you are traveling on particularly busy routes at peak times. Nevertheless, the SVP expresses exactly these fears.

With the e-vignette, one leaves “a digital data track from which complete movement patterns of the corresponding vehicle could be read and tract”, the party notes in its position paper.

Only if the proportion of the sticker version would be ten percent or less it would be abolished. Although a new vignette has to be stuck behind the windshield every year and scraping away is often difficult, many Swiss have become fond of the adhesive. It is considered simple and Swiss, and its design is timeless, so how many stickers will one day be needed? Not even the federal government can say that today. They don’t seem to trust the whole thing anyway. This is shown by a public tender with which the Federal Customs Administration (FCA) is currently looking for a print shop that will produce the sticker version over the next eight years. The supply quantity is strongly based on today’s conditions, confirms a spokesman for the FCA.  Roughly 10.7 million vignettes are to be produced each year.

However, the call for solutions

included all scenarios from “continue without an e-vignette” to “introduction of the e-vignette and rapid switching of users to it”. The procedure is complex because of the future uncertain supply quantity. Without daring to make a precise forecast, the spokesman emphasizes: “We assume that the introduction of the e-vignette would have a strong impact on the need for the sticker-version.”

The production of the vignettes

is considered a prestigious order. Switzerland was the first country in Europe to introduce one in 1985. At that time, the then-special printing company Trüb in Aarau was entrusted with the production, and later Orell Füssli in Zurich. In 2005, Etitex AG was able to secure the order in Köniz, Bern. The latest contract with the company expires at the end of this year. According to industry experts, it is likely that the company will seek to receive the order again

from Sven Altermatt