Do I really need an environmental badge, how is it checked?

In recent years, more and more cities have the so-called “environmental zone” introduced. This means that you can usually only drive into the city center with an environmental sticker. The environmental sticker is available in the colors green (= Euro 4 emissions standard), yellow (EUR 3) and red (EUR 1). For example, in recent years the city of Berlin has restricted access to its city center to vehicles with the cleanest emissions standard, “EURO 4”.

The environmental badges are cumbersome for the cities to control. Video technology for automatically recognizing the badges, eg from the badge limit, is not used anywhere. Rather checked mostly the parking surveillance service the environmental stickers. If a vehicle is parked within an environmental zone, the parking attendants check whether an environmental sticker is present.

tip: It is recommended that the sticker (seen from the wheel) bottom right to be installed in the windshield. In winter, the parking attendants can then find the plaques more quickly on snow-covered vehicles.

Environmental badges are available from TÜV or almost every car dealership maximum 5 EUR. Bring your vehicle registration document with you when you purchase it, because it contains the emissions standard for your sticker.

Attaching a sticker to the vehicle is strongly recommended: Anyone who enters a prohibited zone without a corresponding particulate matter sticker must use one Fine of 40 euros calculate and calculate with 1 point in the index of traffic offenders.

The cities with environmental zones can be viewed in this list.

Example: Only vehicles with a green badge are allowed to enter here (Berlin)