"New rules apply to the control of fuels along with the new year. They will protect consumers and honest businesses,” emphasised Minister of Industry and Trade Martin Kocourek, adding, "Consumers have the right to protection in areas where they cannot protect themselves.”

Compared to last year, the Czech Trade Inspection will also significantly increase the frequency of filling station inspections. "The plan for this year is to inspect around 2,200 fuel samples,” says Jan Štěpánek, the Director General of the Czech Trade Inspection. This means that the total number of inspections should rise by around 20 per cent.

The Inspection is also planning something new and rapid — a mobile laboratory. "As soon as we get information about the suspected sale of poor quality fuel we can be at the location very quickly. If it is then shown that the fuel tested genuinely significantly breaches quality standards, our inspectors will immediately stop its sale,” added Štěpánek.

According to the new rules the Czech Trade Inspection will publish a list of those filling stations that have been finally and conclusively imposed a fine for selling fuel that does not meet quality standards. Minister Kocourek has also already decided to enshrine similar rules into the draft amendment of the Act on Fuels. This has already been approved by the government, but must still be discussed in Parliament. The amendment should become valid in the first half of this year.

"The amendment to the Act will permit the publication of more detailed information than that currently on the Czech Trade Inspection website. Consumers will thus also have complete information about all the suppliers through whom poor quality fuel has been delivered to filling stations,” Minister Kocourek added.

Last year the Czech Trade Inspection took a total of 1,866 samples of fuel. It discovered serious breaches of quality that could represent an increased risk of damage to a vehicle’s engine in 2.1 per cent of the tested samples. In the event of such a finding the Czech Trade Inspection imposes fines of hundreds of thousands or even millions of crowns, and the same applies for the discovery of repeated sales of poor quality fuels by the same entity within a period of one year.

"The Czech Trade Inspection inspects — we are not statisticians. We focus for the main part on inspections of filling stations where we have a suspicion of breaches of quality. This means that the 2.1 per cent finding of serious breaches in our statistics is higher than the actual incidence of such fuels at filling stations in the whole of the Czech Republic,” Jan Štěpánek noted. At the end of 2010 there were a total of 6,591 filling stations registered in this country, of which 3,672 are public.

In total the Czech Trade Inspection discovered breaches of quality in 148 of the 1,866 samples taken. The majority of the deficiencies only represented minor deviations from the quality standards. Last year the Inspection imposed 49 fines totalling CZK 8,267,000. Sanctions of up to CZK 5 million may be imposed for the sale of poor quality fuel.