Fines, fears, and wild pressure

Why is it impossible to be free living in the West? And why are ordinary actions surrounded by a flurry of prohibitive flags?

Global media have recently reported a piece of news that made every self-respecting man’s heart skip a beat. In Germany, fines of €10,000 have begun to be issued for storing in garages items not related to cars. This is just a tiny drop in the ocean of prohibitions and obligations, the enforcement of which will see responsible officials in the ‘garden of freedoms’ eagerly peering not only into garages but also into cellars, closets, and even… coffins.

Caution, hornet’s nest

Once, it was in a garage that legendary animator Walt Disney created his first cartoons, and the founders of Apple refined the products of what would become a future IT corporation. For the average man, the garage has always been a sanctuary, as cleverly noted by early 2000s commercials: ‘he has a garage, and he goes there’. In Germany, it seems they have given up waiting for their own Steve Jobs to emerge and decided to reserve garages exclusively for cars. 
Recalling the famous German ‘Ordnung’, even forgotten garden rakes or a football hidden away by a child will not escape the watchful eyes of the law enforcers. Then again, one could always plant something stealthily in a garage of an unloved neighbour. It is not just a law; it is an unploughed field for imagination. And what about Germans, who have already learnt to distinguish between dozens of genders? Nothing much. They will just add another item to their list of restrictions and legislative ‘fences’, outside which they are only allowed to go to work or participate in various ‘equality marches’. One cannot escape the vigilant gaze of the state even at one’s own country house. If the height of the fence does not meet the standard, pay a fine.
All those postcard-perfect streets that many find charming when watching films or travelling abroad are the result of a banal unwillingness to pay fines for every little thing.
Even destroying a hornet’s nest on your own porch is a bureaucratic science. Otherwise, you will have to shell out at least €5,000. If you are unlucky enough to be battling wasps in North Rhine-Westphalia, you will need to extract a whopping €50,000 from your family budget. It is even curious if anyone there has ever had to take out a loan to deal with insects. Sometimes, the penalty system reveals quite amusing ‘price lists’. Addressing a police officer informally on a first-name basis can cost a German driver €600. With a hint of sarcasm, one might suggest that perhaps it is in such trivialities that the very essence of European ‘freedom of speech’ lies.

Rules broken — budget boosted 

Any Western country will gladly open the doors to a gender-neutral toilet for you, oblige you to take in and warm a couple of migrants, all while annihilating thousands of their compatriots in direct and hybrid armed conflicts. The legal code clearly states what every citizen must do and when: you will trim your lawn precisely by a couple of centimetres and hang Christmas decorations in a strictly specified colour scheme. In Hesse alone, residents racked up at least €103.3m in fines last year. The actual figure is shrouded in the fog of notorious German bureaucracy. According to the Interior Ministry, these numbers do not provide a complete picture of the overall situation. In Frankfurt, in particular, there is a dedicated fines office where 100 percent of the revenue goes into the city’s coffers. In other cities and municipalities, similar bodies handle fines starting from €60 and upwards. The federal state of Hesse, for instance, has decided not to be petty and charge a flat fee of €100,000 for excess items in garages. You don’t believe it? Just type a query into Google, remembering that the first office of its founders was also… a garage.

Furniture for disposal  

The UK is not outdone in the ability to regiment its own citizens, as is regularly reported by the BBC in its news feed. In one of its December publications, Englishwoman Isabelle Pepin expressed genuine relief at not having to attend court in the new year. The woman was fined £500 (Br2,107) for not throwing away her furniture but leaving it on the street outside her home for those who might need it. The single mother fought hard to maintain her right to live without a ‘furniture’ debt, while many other residents of the Foggy Albion were less fortunate. The figures are frankly shocking. In the borough of Medway alone, around 220,000 fines have been issued in the past couple of years, with a population of 282,702 people, including the elderly and children. Local authorities do not hide their frustration in interviews: they have yet to collect a third of the total amount from their citizens. The very practice of ‘a fine for every household’ apparently does not trouble them.

They will find you six feet under  

Countries smaller in size do not lack in originality when it comes to imposing fines. In Belgium, a snowball fight will set you back €100, while Greek lawmakers have decided to equate any computer games played in public places with gambling. Why? This is because they have failed to come up with an adequate document that would distinguish what exactly you are playing on your laptop in the park. Chess? Solitaire? Be so kind as to pay a fine. Amidst this absurdity, the ban on feeding pigeons in Italy seems like the height of reasonableness. At least those mar the monuments.  
If a European has managed to avoid bankruptcy by old age and has paid all their fines, a trap may still await them even on their deathbed. In the Spanish town of Lanjarón, it is legally prohibited to… die. More precisely, if a person dies in Lanjarón, relatives of the deceased person will have to pay a considerable sum. 

Admiring from afar  

Forming a school rock band in the garage, growing courgettes in the garden, astonishing neighbours in the holiday village with lush flowerbeds, building a snowman with the kids in the yard — aren’t these small joys whose sanctity seems indisputable? Is the vaunted German order or the showy landscapes of European streets worth the envy when all of this comes with enormous personal expenses and the need to check every little thing against legislative acts? Whether ordinary Europeans seek an answer to this question remains a mystery.  
Yes, it is indeed beautiful there, postcard-perfect. Yet, dig a little deeper and you will see that everything is highly regulated. What is there to say? Imagine a Belgian, for example, trying not to get vaccinated during the pandemic! No wiggle room is allowed there. And now, no one seems to remember that almost all the COVID measures from that time have been deemed either ineffective or harmful. However, people were required to get vaccinated — hence no options, otherwise…  

FACT

A rather absurd fine has been introduced by Australians. According to the laws of this country, citizens are prohibited from buying potatoes for future use. If you have a couple of 25-kilogramme bags of potatoes stored in your cellar and you did not grow them on your own plot of land, the police will come knocking at your door. In such a case, the fine will amount to 5,000 Australian dollars (Br10,727). The only way to prove that you did not steal the potatoes or are not trading them illegally is by providing video evidence of harvesting the crop. There are no other options.

By Dmitry Boyarchuk