Driving in Athens: Heavy vehicle ban

Athens, Greece · Heavy vehicle ban

Official name Ωράριο κυκλοφορίας και τροφοδοσίας φορτηγών στον Δήμο Αθηναίων (απόφαση 177/2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής)

In force in Athens right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 12:05 · Europe/Athens

  • In force Goods vehicles over 2 tonnes gross weight, supplying businesses, supermarkets or other shops in the Municipality of Athens

Lifts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 21:00 local time.

Every rule here is about a goods vehicle on a supply run. A car is never in this scheme at any hour, and neither is a van being driven rather than used to resupply a shop — so a verdict of "in force" above means the restriction exists at that moment, not that it reaches the reader's vehicle.

Goods vehicles of up to two tonnes gross weight carry no rule at all, because the decision gives them none: they may resupply at any hour of any day. They are deliberately absent from the timetable rather than encoded as an always-open rule, so that the only encoded rule is the one that can actually stop a driver.

The Commercial Triangle is inside this municipality and is NOT inside this timetable. For supply there the decision applies a 1997 joint ministerial decision whose text is a scan we could not read, so the 09:00–21:00 answer above may be the wrong instrument for a shop between Athinas, Omonoia, Stadiou, Syntagma and Mitropoleos.

The six exemptions of part II subtract whole classes of vehicle and errand that the encoding cannot see — service-plated public vehicles, medicines and hospital supplies, press distribution, documented supply to and from the Commercial Triangle, building materials and concrete and lifting vehicles and urgent removals, and purely electric vehicles up to 2.5 tonnes gross. For any of those the schedule over-warns.

The supply of the Varvakios market's fresh-fish shops is exempted by name from the Athens prohibition, and the timetable cannot tell a fish delivery from any other. That is one more direction in which the answer above warns when the decision does not.

The decision names no public holiday, no weekend variation and no season, so the timetable runs the same clock on 15 August and on a Sunday. That is the decision's own silence and not a gap in our encoding — there is no holiday rule here to miss.

The zone edge is the municipal boundary of the Δήμος Αθηναίων, and we do not hold it as geometry, so the warning is given at city level from a single anchor. One road the same decision times separately, Leoforos Vouliagmenis, is listed with no segment and no municipality and touches the city; where it does, the instrument sets two clocks over one road and resolves neither.

Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.

What applies

Athens sorts delivery vehicles by weight and by the clock, and it does it across the whole municipality rather than inside a drawn zone. Between 21:00 and 09:00 the next morning, any type of goods vehicle may circulate and supply the city's businesses, supermarkets and other shops.

For the rest of the day — 09:00 to 21:00, every day of the week — that resupply may only be carried out by vehicles whose gross weight is up to two tonnes. There is no charge, no sticker, no permit to buy and no exhaust class that changes the answer: the Regional Council of Attica wrote a clock and a weight, and nothing else.

If you are driving a car, none of it reaches you at any hour, and the same is true of a van being driven rather than used to supply a shop. Two carve-outs sit inside the city.

The supply of the fresh-fish shops of the Varvakios market is expressly taken out of the Athens prohibition, and the Commercial Triangle — the block bounded by Athinas, Plateia Omonoias, Stadiou, Plateia Syntagmatos and Mitropoleos — is governed for supply purposes not by this decision at all but by a 1997 joint ministerial decision that this one points at and does not reproduce.

Above those sit six exemptions that run through the whole instrument, of which one is about the vehicle rather than the errand: a purely electric vehicle of up to 2.5 tonnes gross is outside the restrictions. The decision is not seasonal and not annual, and that is the change that makes it publishable.

Its immediate predecessor was an annual instrument — decision 78/2021 fixed the hours «για το χρονικό διάστημα από ψήφισης της παρούσης έως και τις 31.12.2021» — whereas this one states that it runs from publication until a newer decision is issued. Two supplements in 2025 amended it without replacing it, which is how we know it is still the operative text.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022: απόφαση αριθμ. 177/14.12.2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, «Καθορισμός ωραρίου τροφοδοσίας επιχειρήσεων, υπεραγορών και λοιπών καταστημάτων και περιορισμός κυκλοφορίας φορτηγών», μέρος Ι περ. 2.α, 2.β και 2.γ, μέρος ΙΙ περ. i–vi, and the closing clause on duration

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and there is nothing to buy. The decision prohibits and permits by vehicle weight and by hour; it names no fee, no day pass, no permit price and no toll, and it offers no way to pay for an hour it closes. The only figure of money anywhere in the instrument is a penalty for breaching it, which is a fine and not a tariff, and it is recorded in the penalty field rather than here.

Nor is there a scheme to register with: the exemptions in part II are self-executing descriptions of vehicles and errands, and the one that comes closest to paperwork — supply to and from the Commercial Triangle — asks for the transport documents the journey already carries, not for a licence bought in advance.

When it operates

Every day of the week, including weekends. In the Municipality of Athens the decision sets an ωράριο for the circulation and supply of the city's businesses, supermarkets and other shops running from 21:00 to 09:00 the following morning, and in that window any type of goods vehicle may do it.

For the remaining hours — 09:00 to 21:00 — the resupply is to be carried out with vehicles of gross weight up to two (2) tonnes, which is the restriction: a heavier goods vehicle has no hour between 09:00 and 21:00 in which the decision lets it supply a shop in Athens.

The decision names no day of the week as different, no public holiday, no season and no August, so the same clock applies on a Sunday in January and a Tuesday in August.

Two hours-related carve-outs are stated in the same paragraph and are not times of day but places and cargoes: the supply of the fresh-fish shops of the Varvakios market is exempted from the Athens prohibition outright, and for shops inside the Commercial Triangle the supply hours are whatever joint ministerial decision ΔΜΕΟ/στ/οικ./1894/Φ919 (Β' 684/1997) says, which this decision points at and does not reproduce — we have not been able to read that 1997 text, and the area field says why.

Beyond Athens the same instrument sets different clocks for its neighbours, and they are genuinely different rather than variants: Piraeus and Byronas run 24 hours a day except 07:00 to 10:30, Ilioupoli and Dafni-Ymittos 19:00 to 07:00, Galatsi 20:00 to 07:00 and Irakleio Attikis 19:00 to 07:00. None of those is the Athens rule and none of them is encoded here.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022: απόφαση 177/14.12.2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, μέρος Ι περ. 2.α («Στον Δήμο Αθηναίων καθορίζεται ωράριο για την κυκλοφορία και την τροφοδοσία των επιχειρήσεων, υπεραγορών και λοιπών καταστημάτων της πόλης από τις 21:00 έως και 09.00 της επόμενης, με κάθε τύπο φορτηγού οχήματος. Για τις υπόλοιπες ώρες, ο ανεφοδιασμός τους θα διενεργείται με οχήματα μικτού βάρους μέχρι δύο (2) τόνους.»), περ. 2.β and 2.γ, with the neighbouring municipalities in περ. 3 to 6 and in the 2025 supplements

Area covered

The whole Municipality of Athens, not a drawn zone inside it.

The Athens paragraph says «Στον Δήμο Αθηναίων» and stops there: it names no perimeter, no gate and no street, so the boundary of this rule is the municipal boundary — the Δήμος Αθηναίων of the Attica Region, the level-7 authority whose area is about nine kilometres across and which does not include Piraeus, Kallithea, Zografou, Nea Smyrni or any of the other municipalities of the Athens conurbation.

One smaller area is carved out of it by name.

The Commercial Triangle (Εμπορικό Τρίγωνο) is defined in the same decision as the part of the centre enclosed by Athinas – Plateia Omonoias – Stadiou – Plateia Syntagmatos – Mitropoleos – Athinas, and for the supply of shops inside it the decision does not apply its own clock: it applies the provisions of joint ministerial decision ΔΜΕΟ/στ/οικ./1894/Φ919, published at Β' 684/1997.

We do not hold what those provisions say. The 1997 gazette is a scan — 717 265 bytes and zero characters of extractable text — and the readable 2023 amendment to it deletes two paragraphs without restating the rule, so for the Commercial Triangle this record can tell a driver which instrument governs and not what it requires.

The rest of the same Attica decision covers places that are not Athens, and they are listed here only so that a reader does not take them for parts of this rule: the perimeter roads of the inner ring named in part I.1.a run through Zografou, Egaleo, Kallithea, Nea Smyrni and Palaio Faliro, Leoforos Mesogeion is expressly taken «εκτός Δήμου Αθηναίων», and parts I.3 to I.6 and the two 2025 supplements address Piraeus, Ilioupoli, Galatsi, Dafni-Ymittos, Byronas and Irakleio Attikis.

One of the named perimeter roads is genuinely unresolved and it is worth saying which. Every other entry in that list carries either a municipality in brackets or a pair of end points — Iera Odos, for instance, is given only «από Κηφισού έως Θηβών» in the Egaleo area, so its Athens end is outside the list. Leoforos Vouliagmenis is given with neither: no segment, no municipality.

It begins at the edge of the Athens municipality and runs south through several others, so where it lies inside the city two clocks in one instrument reach the same asphalt. The decision does not resolve that, and neither do we.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022: απόφαση 177/14.12.2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, μέρος Ι περ. 1.α, 1.β, 2.α, 2.γ and 3 to 6. The Commercial Triangle perimeter is quoted from περ. 2.γ: «το τμήμα του κέντρου της Αθήνας που περικλείεται από τις οδούς: Αθηνάς - Πλατ. Ομονοίας - Σταδίου - Πλ. Συντάγματος - Μητροπόλεως - Αθηνάς»

Why there is no map here
There is no map to hold, because the rule was never drawn. The Attica decision addresses «Στον Δήμο Αθηναίων» and names no perimeter, so the only boundary this rule has is the municipal boundary — published by the Greek state as an administrative limit, not by the Region as a traffic zone. The publisher's own channels are closed to us besides: the Region's site, www.patt.gov.gr, answers HTTP 418 to robots.txt and to its home page, the City of Athens sits behind Cloudflare, and the national transparency register diavgeia.gov.gr disallows the document paths in its robots.txt. What is open is the gazette, and the gazette publishes text. Drawing the municipality ourselves from OpenStreetMap would produce a line that looks exactly as authoritative as one the Region published and that would decide whether a driver is committing an offence, so the city is warned from its anchor instead and the area field carries what the decision actually says.

The authority's own map: Περιφέρεια Αττικής (Region of Attica) / Δήμος Αθηναίων

Petrol standard

There is no emission standard in this scheme and never has been. The decision sorts vehicles by gross weight and by useful load, and by nothing else: fuel, Euro class, engine age and exhaust certification appear nowhere in it, so no sticker and no clean engine buys a heavier goods vehicle into Athens between 09:00 and 21:00.

The reasoning recitals do talk about air pollution — the Regional Council records that peak-hour traffic raises measured pollutant values in Athens and that cutting peak traffic will help — but the operative text turns that into a weight and a clock rather than into an emission class.

One vehicle-technology exemption does exist and it is not an emission standard either: part II vi) takes purely electric vehicles of gross weight up to 2.5 tonnes out of the restrictions, which is a propulsion test with a weight ceiling, not a tailpipe limit, and it is recorded in how_to_comply where a driver will look for it.

Diesel standard

Not applicable, for the same reason as the petrol standard: the instrument contains no emission class of any kind. A diesel goods vehicle over two tonnes gross is treated exactly as a petrol one of the same weight, and a Euro 6 lorry has no advantage over a twenty-year-old one at any hour.

The only way propulsion changes the answer is part II vi), the exemption for purely electric vehicles of up to 2.5 tonnes gross, which no diesel vehicle can reach.

Penalty if you do not comply
€150.00 The decision itself prints no figure. It cites the penalties of the last subparagraph of article 52 §8 of the 1999 Highway Code, and that Code was repealed on 13 September 2025; the €150 is the administrative fine the Code now in force sets for the category the same offence falls into. The amount is therefore read from the statute, not from the Attica decision, and the decision has not been updated to point at the new article.Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025: ν. 5209/2025, the Greek Highway Code now in force. Article 108 §5 β) βα) prices a category Ε2-Α offence at «διοικητικό πρόστιμο εκατόν πενήντα (150) ευρώ»; article 55 §8, which is the successor of the provision the Attica decision cites, permits the fixing of supply hours for businesses, supermarkets and other shops and states «Η παράβαση της παρ. 16 του άρθρου 112, κατατάσσεται στην κατηγορία Ε2-Α»; article 112 §16 περ. ιγ) is the delegation this decision was taken under, in terms: «Με απόφαση των κατά περίπτωση αρμόδιων Περιφερειακών Συμβουλίων καθορίζεται το ωράριο τροφοδοσίας του δευτέρου εδαφίου της παρ. 8 του άρθρου 55» — the neighbouring περ. ιβ) is the ministerial lorry restriction on the national network, which is the limb article 55 §8 sends to ν. 3446/2006 instead. ⚠️ That sentence of article 55 §8 cites «παρ. 16 του άρθρου 116», an outdoor-advertising provision and plainly a slip for 112; the sentence that classifies the offence cites 112 correctly, and it is the one this figure rests on. Article 114 §4 keeps regulatory acts issued under the 1999 Code in force, which is why decision 177/2022 survives the repeal, and article 115 b) repeals that Code, with article 132 §1 putting the repeal three months after publication

How to comply
  • Weigh the vehicle before you read the clock. The only threshold in the Athens rule is two tonnes GROSS weight — μικτό βάρος, the laden weight of the vehicle, not its payload. At or below it you may resupply a shop in Athens at any hour of any day. Above it, the decision gives you one window and it is the night one.
  • The window is 21:00 to 09:00 the next morning, every day of the week, and in it any type of goods vehicle may circulate and supply. Between 09:00 and 21:00 the decision names no goods vehicle over two tonnes gross that may do it, so plan the delivery into the night rather than looking for an exemption.
  • If you are driving a car you are not in this scheme at any hour, and neither is a van that is simply being driven. Every operative sentence is about goods vehicles and about the supply of businesses, supermarkets and shops; nothing here restricts private traffic, and nothing here is a low-emission zone.
  • Inside the Commercial Triangle, do not use this timetable at all. For the supply of shops in the block bounded by Athinas, Plateia Omonoias, Stadiou, Plateia Syntagmatos and Mitropoleos, the decision hands the question to joint ministerial decision ΔΜΕΟ/στ/οικ./1894/Φ919 (Β' 684/1997). We cannot read that 1997 text — its gazette is a scan — so treat the Triangle as governed by an instrument we have not been able to quote, and ask the Region or the Traffic Police rather than assuming the 21:00–09:00 window covers it.
  • Six exemptions run through the whole instrument, and only one of them is about the vehicle: purely electric vehicles of gross weight up to 2.5 tonnes are outside the restrictions. The other five are about the errand or the operator — state, municipal and public-utility lorries with service plates or visible service markings and vehicles hired by those services; lorries carrying medicines and hospital supplies; lorries distributing the daily and periodical press; vehicles supplying shops inside the Commercial Triangle that can show, from the accompanying transport documents, that the journey is to or from that area; and lorries carrying building materials, ready-mix concrete vehicles and lifting vehicles, which may circulate at other hours, as may unforeseen and urgent jobs such as office and household removals.
  • One cargo is exempted by name in Athens and it is a narrow one: the supply of the fresh-fish shops of the Varvakios market is taken out of the Athens prohibition. That is a class of shop, not a class of vehicle, and it does not extend to the rest of the market or to the rest of the city.
  • Do not carry a neighbouring municipality's clock into Athens or Athens's clock out of it. The same decision gives Piraeus and Byronas 24 hours a day except 07:00 to 10:30, Ilioupoli and Dafni-Ymittos 19:00 to 07:00, Galatsi 20:00 to 07:00 and Irakleio Attikis 19:00 to 07:00, and in Piraeus it adds a separate circulation ban for goods vehicles over 1.5 tonnes useful load from 07:00 to 11:00 and from 14:30 to 16:00 on the city's central avenues. Athens has none of those, and they have none of Athens's.
  • The fine is not in the decision. It cites the penalties of the last subparagraph of article 52 §8 of the 1999 Highway Code, which was repealed on 13 September 2025; the Code now in force classifies the same offence as category Ε2-Α and prices that at €150. Regulatory acts made under the old Code expressly remain in force, so the decision itself is not affected by the repeal — only its penalty citation is out of date.
Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-21
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως: ΦΕΚ Β' 7084/31.12.2022, απόφαση 177/14.12.2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, μέρος Ι περ. 2 to 6 and μέρος ΙΙ περ. i–vi; ΦΕΚ Β' 2330/13.05.2025 and ΦΕΚ Β' 4016/29.07.2025 for the Byronas and Irakleio Attikis cases added to μέρος Ι; and ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025 (ν. 5209/2025), articles 55 §8, 108 §5, 112 §16, 114 §4, 115 and 132, for the penalty and the repeal

Sources

Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-20.

Before you set off

Other cities in Greece

And 35 more in Greece