Last year, 534 parking tickets were tucked under the windshield wipers of diplomatic vehicles in Helsinki. Only 106 – or about one fifth – were paid.
Fines levied against cars with diplomatic plates are not subject to recovery procedures, so there are basically no repercussions for not paying them.
Other Helsinkians are not particularly fastidious about paying fines, either. Nearly half of all parking tickets remained unpaid a month after being issued.
Diplomatic cars, meanwhile, are being parked more carefully than a decade ago. The number of tickets they collect has dropped from more than 1,000 annually just after the turn of the millennium.
Russian and Chinese scofflaws
Typically, diplomatic autos are parked in normal parking spots, but without dropping any coins into the nearest parking meter. The most common excuse is that special CD spots reserved for them have been taken by other drivers.
“That’s not a valid excuse for improper parking,” says Helsinki’s parking superintendant, Kaija Kossila.
The most parking tickets were collected by Russian Embassy vehicles: 141. Only five of these were paid. Second was China, with 56 fines, all unpaid.
Third was the United States with 43 parking fines. However Americans were the most diligent about making up for their misdeeds, paying for 33 of these tickets. Other embassies with large numbers of scofflaws were Tunisia (zero paid of 36 tickets), Saudi Arabia (two paid out of 32) and Ukraine (none paid of 23), and South Korea (zero paid of 18).
The standard parking fine in central Helsinki is 80 euros, dropping to 60 euros in outlying parts of the city.
The Russian and Chinese embassies declined Yle’s requests for comment.
