Payment and deadlines

The deadline to object is 2 weeks, counted from service of the notice on you. Service is a formal event with a date, and that date is what the clock uses — not the date printed as the notice date, and not the date you happened to open the envelope.

The payment deadline is 2 weeks, counted from the point the notice becomes final. It cannot start while an objection is still open, because nothing is final yet.

Where either deadline would end on a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday, it moves to the next working day. That follows from the general civil rules the procedural code brings in; we mark it as a documented inference from that chain rather than as the wording of the deadline provision itself.

A fine notice adds a fee of 5 % of the fine, with a floor of 25 € and a ceiling of 7.500 €, plus 3,50 € for serving it. On small amounts the floor is what you actually pay, which is why a modest fine can arrive with a fee larger than the percentage suggests. The calculator above shows the composition rather than one total, because the parts have different legal bases.

There is one case with a flat fee instead of the percentage: where the notice is issued against the keeper of the vehicle because the driver could not be established. That provision exists and this site names it without stating its amount, which the reviewed data set does not carry.

Hardship is handled in two places, neither of which is a discount. A caution payment can be reduced to 20 € on economic grounds, and a fine notice can set instalments or a later due date. Both turn on your circumstances; neither turns on how quickly you pay.

Once the payment deadline has passed there is a grace period of 2 weeks before enforcement may begin. Enforcement is a separate track with its own instruments; where a fine is not paid and not shown to be unpayable, the statute also provides for detention to compel payment, with a ceiling set in the enforcement provision. This site explains that mechanism and states no duration for it, because the reviewed data set does not carry one.

Prosecution itself is time-barred: a flat 6 months since the first of July this year, amended by the Fifth Act amending the Road Traffic Act — we fetched the promulgated text itself. The shorter figure many guides repeat was the old two-stage law, which ran a shorter clock before a notice was served.