Bratislava’s city council has begun its very own battle of the billboards in an effort to crack down on the illegal posting of advertisements in public places. According to council spokesman Stanislav Scepan, council staff took to the streets on the weekend, placing large red stickers over the top of hundreds of illegally adhered posters and billboards.
This is one of the methods the city is using in its fight against so-called visual smog. Unless the owners of the billboards have their advertising structures removed by the middle of August, City Hall will proceed to remove them itself but at the expense of the respective owners. “The billboards [in question] are advertising structures that have been placed on city land but have no rental contract with the city”, said the spokesman. The Bratislava City Council had previously agreed with selected advertising agencies that they would remove their billboards from the reservations. According to Scepan, some have done so, while others have disregarded the council’s instructions, claiming that the city does not have the right to remove their structures. There are roughly 1,500 billboards in Bratislava, with one-third of them placed on city land. Another 450 billboards have been erected illegally.
