Europe News

Czech town to strip German drivers of Czech licences

Jan 26, 2010, 14:04 GMT

Prague - Some German drivers who lost their domestic driving licences and apparently unlawfully obtained Czech replacement one will no longer be able to get behind the wheels of their cars, it was announced Tuesday.

A Czech town plans to strip more than 100 German nationals of their Czech drivers' licences, after they allegedly cheated to obtain them, an official revealed.

In the European Union, licences issued by one member state are supposed to be valid in the union's other 26 countries.

But Jiri Besta, a transport official in the western Czech town of Nepomuk, said that the German drivers submitted false documents to qualify for a drivers' licences in the neighbouring Czech Republic.

The Nepomuk town hall has opened administrative proceedings in some 130 cases, of which 90 per cent involve German nationals, Besta told the German Press Agency dpa.

The drivers can challenge the proceedings, but their chances are slim given the evidence, he said.

The move stems from a criminal case against three Czech defendants accused of helping Germans, who forfeited their driving licences at home, to obtain Czech licences in exchange for a bribe of 300 euros.

Besta said that police gave the townhall two lists of foreigners, who had supplied false paperwork proving either their residence or study in the Czech Republic - a condition required for foreign applicants to be eligible for a Czech licence.

Police arrested the defendants in the case - a town hall transport commissioner, a driving school teacher and an authorized interpreter - in a raid on a Nepomuk driving school in September 2008.