Fines, price increases still suspended. Here is how much you will pay at the end of the blockade

And three: the postponement of road fine increases that came into force on New Year's Eve with the last Milleproroghe decree (Dl 200/2025) and is valid for the whole of 2026 is the third consecutive one. And it could be a symptom of an embarrassment on the part of politicians in applying the adjustment of the penalties of the Highway Code to the inflation, which since 1993 Article 195 (paragraph 3) of the Code itself requires to be carried out every two years. Thus the amounts that will also be in force in 2026 are the same as those originally intended to apply for the two-year period 2021-2022 and, from one extension to the next, an inflation of 17.5% has been accumulated (the ISTAT price index for blue- and white-collar households, which Article 195 takes as its reference point, has risen by this amount since 2021).

In other words, if at the end of this year the extension that has now come into force is simply allowed to expire, in one fell swoop the amounts would rise by about 20%: to that 17.5% would have to be added the inflation that will have occurred in the meantime during 2026. An unavoidable effect, but one that risks sounding paradoxical if one thinks that the suspension of price increases was decided in order not to burden the pockets of Italians (sorely tried by the crisis due to the pandemic and since then waiting for the economy to grow sufficiently) with the effects of an inflation that had returned to double figures towards the end of the Covid emergency.

So it was that towards the end of 2022, with the Budget Law 2023 (Article 1, Paragraph 497), adjustments were suspended for the first time. Time proved that this was the beginning of a series, which continued with the Milleproroghe of a year ago (Decree 202/2024) and with the current one.

If a further postponement were to be decided as 2027 approaches, this would only add to the bill that will have to be paid sooner or later. Unless we assess that the system does not hold up and decide to change it, perhaps taking advantage of the fact that this year the delegated law reforming the Highway Code (177/2024) could reach the finishing line.

A gift to the undisciplined, at the expense of road safety? Not always, if one thinks not only of the loss of purchasing power, but also of the fact that road traffic is truly chaotic and compliance with the rules (especially those restricting traffic for environmental reasons) is not infrequently complicated, while it is easy to run intoautomatic controls. Not to mention that more than a few sanctions have been tightened over time: the latest example is law 177/2024, which not only tightened up the regulation of stopping by intervening in the case law, but also raised the ordinary sanction for the unauthorised use of cellphone from 165 to 250 euro.