Toshkovski: Even Ministers Paid Their "Safe City" Fines, and the System Brings In Around 10 Million Euros a Year

Interior Minister Panche Toshkovski spent almost an hour at a press conference talking about "Safe City". The message meant to stick: everybody pays the fines - ministers, directors and clergy, in official and private vehicles alike.

"There's hardly an official at any level who hasn't told me: Minister, it works, I paid mine too, the fine arrived," Toshkovski said. He admits there were attempts to pull strings, during the caretaker government, but says they stopped "after my furious reaction" and that in the last year and a half nobody has called him about a specific offence.

A nice story. Except the only proof of it is the minister's own statement. Not a single official is named, there is no data on how many official vehicles were fined, or who paid. If the system really makes no distinctions, why aren't those numbers published the same way the offences of ordinary drivers are?

The money and the cameras

Toshkovski also said how much the project brings in: around 10 million euros a year for the budget, according to initial estimates, since the year isn't over. 25 percent, or around 2.5 million euros, goes to the Interior Ministry to develop the system further. "I'll repeat it for the billionth time, the goal of this project is not to fill the state budget," the minister said.

From December the system expands to Strumica and Shtip, and from February to Bitola as well. Police cars will get cameras that measure speed on the move, mobile devices will be placed at so-called black spots, and illegal parking will be fined too. According to the Interior Ministry's latest summary, from 2 February to 20 August 2026 the system recorded 310,865 offences, 301,835 of them for speeding. Toshkovski claims the number of traffic deaths has fallen by 30 percent, and the project won first place for road safety at the World Police Summit in Dubai.

The minister himself said something worth remembering: "A camera can't fix an unsafe road or replace faulty brakes." True. That's why the question about the 10 million isn't how much will be collected, but how much of it will reach the roads where people are dying.