100,000 vehicles will not be passed TECHNICALLY starting July 5, new rules starting today

Price increase, Photo: Tanjug

After more than a year, you can finally register thousands of vehicles where the engine number or chassis number cannot be read, because today the Amendments to the Regulation on the stamping of identification marks come into force, on the basis of which the engine number or chassis number of the vehicle will again be allowed to be printed.

On the other hand, more than 100,000 vehicles will not be able to pass the technical inspection and will be registered when the tolerance to the illegal amount of exhaust gases ceases on July 5 of this year. Therefore, 2021 could solve one problem, but it will also bring another problem for a much larger number of vehicle owners.

Do you have a driving pass?

Since the beginning of last year, more precisely on January 18, the owners of vehicles that had an illegible number of engines or chassis could not correct this error anywhere, as no technical inspection has carried out the printing of identification marks since that date . Because at that time their old powers to print identification marks expired, and due to lack of logic in the regulations of the Ministry of the Interior, they could not renew those powers.

What is it really about? In July 2019, the Home Office approved the Rulebook on the printing of identification marks, according to which it was prescribed that the chassis number must be printed at a minimum depth of one millimeter. However, the sheet metal on many vehicles is too thin to comply with this regulation. Therefore, the technical inspections stopped printing the identification mark as soon as their old authorization for that work expired.

Because of that, the used vehicle parcels were filled with cars with an illegible number of engines or chassis. To make matters worse, most of these vehicles are technically correct and were practically unusable for a year due to illogical regulations. Finally, the Ministry of the Interior has remedied this deficiency, so that from today, when the Modifications to the Identification Marks Sealing Regulations come into force, the number of engines or chassis of the vehicles may finally be entered.

On the other hand, the date that could bring a revolution in the vehicle registration process in Serbia is July 5. In other words, on July 5, 2018, the new stricter Rulebook for technical inspection of vehicles came into force, which came into force two years ago, with the possibility that both technical inspection lines and vehicle owners had the opportunity to adapt to one of the most stringent measures in the next three years – control of exhaust emissions.

Recent research shows that more than 100,000 vehicles will not be able to pass technical inspection because they emit an inadequate amount of exhaust gases. The president of the Association of Technical Inspections, Vladimir Marinković, believes that owners of imported vehicles will have the biggest problem.

– Many of these vehicles do not have a catalytic converter. On the other hand, older vehicles will have to meet exhaust emission standards when those vehicles are new. For example, this means that the “juice” must emit up to 3.5 carbon monoxide (CO). And if “Yugo” had a gas emission of 4.5 CO, it would no longer be able to drive, explains Marinkovic.

As he himself says, some technical inspection lines will stop working on July 5.

– For many technical inspection lines, the acquisition of new equipment is not as much a problem as the dimensions of the technical inspection. Spatially, they cannot meet all the criteria and that is why they will be closed. That is why it is realistic that 500 to 700 technical inspection lines continue to operate in accordance with the new regulations. By the way, the owners of the technical inspection lines should have a July 5 deadline to submit a job application under the new rule, Marinkovic emphasizes.

The new president of the Serbian Association of Importers of Vehicles and Parts, Milan Belin, is not surprised by the large number of vehicles illegally polluting the air in Serbia.

For me it is clear if we take into account that in the first six months of 2021 70,461 vehicles were registered, of which 31,483 cars are over 14 years old and 22,344 vehicles are between 10 and 13 years old. This means that almost half of the registered cars have no use or commercial value.

So the big question is whether these vehicles have the correct catalytic converter and how the owners will replace it. Especially if we take into account that the catalytic converter costs almost as much as your car from 1,500 to 2,000 euros – Belin points out for “Blic” and adds that when imported vehicles are included, the number of older cars is even higher.