The €5 highway toll that Albanian and Kosovar citizens will have to pay for every trip they make on the 101 km Milot–Morina highway segment is the highest compared with other European highway tolls.
Monitor Magazine compared the toll the Rama government assigned to the Rruga e Kombit highway, with those of European highways, bridges, and tunnels. Going off of data taken from tolls.eu, Monitor writes:
As one can see from the ranking, Albania has the highest figures for tolls meant to only pay for a public investment’s maintenance, at €5 for cars and €22.50 for trucks. Austria’s highway tolls reach a daily average of €0.5 for cars and €0.9 for trucks. Macedonia’s tolls vary from €0.9 daily for cars to €2.50–€3.50 daily for trucks. The toll for the Prado-Carénage tunnel in France is €2.80 for cars and €3.20 for trucks. To pass the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge over the Bosphorus strait, in Turkey, cars need to pay €1.70 and trucks €2.30. In Moldova cars pay €0.50 daily, while in Romania they pay €0.40 daily.
Experts from the General Roads Directorate confirm that usually the maximum toll for road maintenance is €2.5 for 100 km. Nonetheless, the toll for the Milot–Morina segment, measuring at less than 115 km in length, will be €5 for incoming cars and €5 for outgoing ones, with the toll for trucks jumping to €22.50.
Considerably higher than estimated in consultancy report
The €5 charge is considerably higher than the charge suggested in a confidential consultancy report to the Ministry of Transport from August 2015, in which the consultancy firm Egnantia Odhos advises a tariff between €1 and €2.50 per 100 km. According to the report, €3.50 would be the absolute maximum affordable for regular Albanian families.
Kosovo objects to toll
Kosovar Minister of Infrastructure Pal Lekaj already denounced the toll, declaring that the Kosovar government had received no formal notification of the Albanian government’s plan, and that the tariff is “unaffordable.”
The €5 highway toll was part of the concession contract the government and the Turkish company Vendeka Bilgi Teknolojileri Ltd. signed in December 2016. According to this contract, the company will be responsible for the maintenance of the Rruga e Kombit for 30 years.
