The Motor (Transport) Insurance Bureau of Ukraine (MTIBU) fulfills its international obligations and functions in war conditions.
“We are all facing the tragic and unique situation of the war initiated by the Russian Federation in Ukraine: we now have one National Bureau (MTIBU), which is a member of the board of the Green Card Bureau, is under fire, but still continues to work. It seems fantastic and almost unbelievable, but yes – it’s true: under all these circumstances, cooperation with MTIBU continues, despite the dramatic reality,” said Sandra Schwartz, President of the Board of the Green Card Bureau, in an exclusive interview with the analytical publication XPrimm.
According to her, according to MTIBU, the war in Ukraine caused a huge flow of refugees who left the country, many of them travel by car. Thus, while promoting a general consolidation of efforts to help them cope with the tragedy of war and seek asylum, European insurers are dealing with a very specific technical problem: crashes involving cars with Ukrainian license plates in the context of the fact that in an extreme situation, many of of them left for European countries without concluding an agreement on compulsory international insurance “Green Card”.
Answering a question about the number of Ukrainian cars that are now moving on European roads, Schwartz noted that, despite the fact that the Council of Bureaux is in constant contact with the authorities of countries that have a direct border with Ukraine, and the total number of refugees is known, there is a significant shortage information on the number of cars on Ukrainian license plates that left the country after the start of Russian military aggression.
“So we don’t have aggregated hard data yet, but we are sure that there are a huge number of Ukrainian-registered cars that not only cross the Ukrainian border to leave, but also drive further across Europe, where people hope to find shelter. And many of these cars do not have proper insurance protection,” she stated.
Schwartz stressed that such a situation is not legitimate, but has become generally accepted due to its urgency, since checking whether people have proper insurance is much less important than giving them access to a shelter as soon as possible. However, of course, there is a need to solve it.
Schwartz explained that there are several national initiatives to provide Ukrainians with free or cheap Green Card insurance or to cover temporary losses caused by uninsured Ukrainian cars.
“Also, a discussion has already begun whether this should be a common pan-European solution and how such a mechanism can work,” said the President of the Council of Bureaux.
She explained that the Council of Bureaux is in close contact with Insurance Europe (Federation of Insurers and Reinsurers, which unites 39 European insurance associations) on this issue in order to decide on the solution that will best resolve the current situation.
Due to the fact that the Ukrainian Bureau “Green Card” and insurers who are full members of the MTIBU are actively working, Ukrainian drivers can remotely renew an expired policy or receive a new one in digital format (as a pdf file). In the current situation, during verification, the document will be accepted in digital format, despite the fact that this is inconsistent with the UNECE recommendations, according to which the Green Card is a valid document only if it is provided in paper form.
Finally, the war in Ukraine also has a significant impact on cooperation with the Russian and Belarusian Green Card Bureaus.
“The first question is how and how it is still possible under the sanctions regime to make sure that the Russian Bureau is able to fulfill its obligations as a member of the Council of Bureaux. Of course, most of the questions at the moment are related to financial aspects, money transfers, etc.
We, as a system, must decide, taking into account reputational aspects, whether it is appropriate to have a Russian National Bureau among the members of the Bureau.According to the rules of the Green Card system, the only reason for suspending the membership of a particular national bureau is that it violates our rules.Thus , we must, first of all, analyze whether this is true or not,” Schwartz explained.
