TL;DR: You can get 100€ fine if your vehicle doesn’t have a green emission sticker and you drive in the urban areas in Germany & Austria
Low emission zones
When we were traveling through Germany in 2023 autumn our navigation app Waze started to warn us that we can’t enter certainÂ
Umwelt zones without a special sticker.You can read more at www.germanemissionssticker.com but in short many bigger cities in Germany and Austria have low emission zones where you can’t drive a vehicle that doesn’t meet EURO 4 emission standard (or EURO 6 in few specific streets in few biggest cities).
We were originally quite worried since our car was 10 years old diesel van but these rules are quite relaxed and you can get the green sticker even if you don’t drive electric car.
Where can you get the sticker?
Luckily this sticker is free and you can get it by visiting a vehicle inspection company such as DEKRA or TĂśV. No reservation was needed when we visited their office and we got the sticker in 15 minutes. Make sure you bring your vehicle registration certificate and ask for anÂ
Umweltplakette.Navigate to inspection company near you:
You can also order this sticker already to your home address before entering to Germany for a small fee from germanemissionssticker.com
What if your car has too big emissions?
If you have a car which is not eligible for the green sticker we recommend you to use Waze for navigation and it will warn you if your route goes through a low emission zone.
Here’s how it looked for us when driving in Cologne in Germany 🇩🇪:
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