Drug use, driving without a license… paying your fine immediately is now possible

In an interview with Provence in June, Emmanuel Macron did not hide his annoyance. If the police have issued no less than 330,000 criminal fixed fines (AFD) to drug users since September 2020, the State is facing a major problem: difficulty getting money into the coffers. “What we noticed is that as payment is made by telepayment between 45 days and 60 days, we have a recovery rate of 35%.lamented the tenant of the Elysée.

From this observation quite simply “unacceptable”the Head of State drew an idea from it: making possible the immediate payment of these fixed fines which apply to offenses “minors”. We are talking here about the use of narcotics, driving without a license or insurance, illegal occupation of someone else’s land or even a building lobby.

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A decree published in the Official Journal

The measure taken by the President of the Republic finally came to fruition on November 8 with the publication of a decree in the Official Journal. As expected, the regulatory text makes effective “the possibility of making immediate payment of the amount less a fixed tort fine in the hands of the fine officer”. A payment which can be made directly by check, cash or bank card (Code of Criminal Procedure, art.49-2). “We have started to equip agents with 5,000 payment terminals”Emmanuel Macron clarified in the spring.

In detail, if the fine is paid by check or cash, the police officer or gendarme must necessarily give a receipt to the offender, certifying that he has paid the fine in question. In the event of payment by credit card, the offender may ask the enforcement officer to send a digital receipt.

Unclog the courts

“One of the ambitions of the tort lump sum fines procedure (a device initially voted for by Parliament on November 18, 2016, Editor’s note) is in fact to truly tackle simple disputes which embolize the police and the justice system (… )», underlines the Ministry of the Interior in a press release. Because as a reminder, the payment of a lump sum tort fine results in the prosecution being terminated by the public prosecutor.

For example, a person controlled “using drugs or in possession of small quantities” risks a fixed criminal fine of 200 euros. For an adult driver without a driving license who is arrested for the first time, the fixed fine amounts to 800 euros. Amounts which are reduced in the event of immediate payment (respectively 150 euros for the use of narcotics and 640 euros for driving without a license).