After joining the European Union, the Czech Republic also started to work on the quality of the motorway system so that drivers themselves would participate in it. By joining the single market and the borderless Schengen area, traffic on Czech roads has also increased. Not only because of the European directives that proposed this, it was necessary to deal with the smart monetisation of this traffic. Following foreign examples, the Czech government began to construct an electronic toll collection network.
The toll for vehicles with a gross weight of over 3.5 tonnes was introduced on 1 January 2007 by an amendment to the Road Act on 970 kilometres of motorways and roads. This was a pilot followed by extension projects. The collection of the toll as well as the actual project of building its infrastructure were, of course, a great attraction for private contractors, who fought hard battles in the tenders with many corruption allegations.
Four players entered the competition in 2005. The companies and consortia Mytia (Ascom Fela + Damov + ABD Group), Autostrade, Kapsch and A-Way + AŽD competed for the construction of the backbone infrastructure and the 10-year operation of the toll system. The problem from the beginning was the tender conditions, which by defining technical parameters prevented several multinational players using satellites and their own infrastructure from participating. In addition to expert controversy about whether these technical specifications were chosen correctly, the possible intention of the contracting authority to exclude some bidders was also discussed. It is natural for lobbying to take place in such a large contract, but in the case of tolls it was largely covert, which understandably gave rise to controversy leading to international legal disputes.
Three of the four bids received were eventually eliminated from the tender on the grounds of technical unsuitability of the proposed project solutions. The only unselected, and therefore possible winner of the tender, was Kapsch. It was known to have close contacts with some politicians. The suspicion of corruption was investigated by the police, audit authorities and a parliamentary commission. Despite this pressure and pressure from the public and anti-corruption organisations, a new tender was not launched, but in 2006 the state signed a contract with Kapsch. The company succeeded in the parliamentary commission, the Supreme Administrative Court and the Office for the Protection of Competition, and the police investigation did not produce results in such a short time. However, the case was still being dealt with by criminal investigators for years afterwards.
Another problem with the operation of the toll system was the constant changes to the originally proclaimed objectives. Without a clearer explanation, the government backed away from its intention to charge and toll an additional 1,200 kilometres of first-class roads. In the relationship with Kapsch, new, often secret, amendments were added, which later proved to be disadvantageous for the state. Although the contract with the company was due to expire in 2016, the ministers from the ANO movement did not prepare the documents for a new toll tender in time and the state extended the cooperation with Kapsch for three years without sufficient justification. There were also rumours behind the scenes that Jaroslav Faltýnek, a powerful man of the ANO movement who has repeatedly appeared in various cases related to the Transport Ministry, was behind the promotion of cooperation with Kapsch and the steps that led to the extension of cooperation.
A new toll tender was finally prepared in 2017. Again, four bidders applied. Kapsch, the CzechToll – SkyToll consortium (both linked to the PPF Group), National Toll Payment Services and T-Systems competed for the operation of the toll for ten years from 2020. In April 2018, the Ministry of Transport announced the CzechToll and SkyToll consortium as the winner. Unlike the toll system offered in Slovakia, the consortium said the bid leaves ownership of the infrastructure in the hands of the state, offered a more favourable price, more services and a larger share of toll collected for the state than its eastern neighbours.
Ironically, however, an active operator – Kapsch – challenged the tender before the Office for the Protection of Competition. According to the company, the winner of the tender cheated in its bid and Kapsch also emphasised the significant investments it believes it has made in the toll operation for the state. The state also ran into a dispute of advisors – the firms that advised it on the tender were challenged by unsuccessful bidders for the provision of these services. The unsuccessful consultant firms also claimed that the DOT was following the wrong consultant’s information in designing the project. As a result, at the time of writing the History of Corruption, there is a backlog, a lack of vision for the next period, contractual fines, sanctions from regulatory authorities and a patchwork of various legal disputes between the state and private firms.
