Driving in Galatsi: Heavy vehicle ban

Galatsi, Greece · Heavy vehicle ban

Official name Ωράριο τροφοδοσίας των καταστημάτων (super markets) του Δήμου Γαλατσίου (απόφαση 177/2022 του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Αττικής, μέρος Ι περ. 5)

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

  • In force Goods vehicles over 2 tonnes gross weight, resupplying shops in the Municipality of Galatsi

Lifts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 20:00 local time.

The rule 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.

This window closes an hour later than the other three suburban cases of the same decision. A reader who has just read Ilioupoli, Dafni-Ymittos or Irakleio Attikis will have 19:00 in mind; in Galatsi the restriction runs to 20:00, and the encoding above is the Galatsi one.

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 Athens 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.

Unlike two of its neighbours, the Galatsi case grants no exemption for shops with their own loading space, so the encoding has none to miss. That is the decision's own wording rather than a simplification here.

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 Γαλατσίου, and we do not hold it as geometry, so the warning is given at city level from a single anchor. Galatsi is a small inner suburb with the City of Athens on two sides, and Athens runs a different clock, so a driver near the edge may be under a rule this record does not encode.

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

What applies

Galatsi is one of eight Attica municipalities timetabled by a single decision of the Regional Council of Attica, and its case is two sentences long — the shortest of the eight. Between 20:00 and 07:00 the next morning, any type of goods vehicle may resupply the shops of the town.

For the rest of the day — 07:00 to 20:00, every day of the week — that resupply is to be carried out with vehicles of gross weight up to two tonnes, which means a heavier goods vehicle has no daytime hour in which the decision lets it deliver here. There is no charge, no permit, no sticker and no emission class anywhere in the instrument: the Regional Council wrote a clock and a weight.

If you are driving a car none of it reaches you at any hour, and neither does a van that is simply being driven rather than used to resupply a shop. What Galatsi does NOT have is worth saying as plainly as what it has, because two of its neighbours in the same decision do.

Ilioupoli's case and Irakleio Attikis's case both exempt shops that have their own loading and unloading space from keeping the timetable at all; the Galatsi case contains no such sentence, and this record does not import one.

Above the case sit the 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; it runs from publication until a newer decision is issued, and two supplements in 2025 amended it without replacing it, which is how we know it is still the operative text. Galatsi's window is also the latest-closing of the four suburban cases: 20:00 rather than the 19:00 of Ilioupoli, Dafni-Ymittos and Irakleio Attikis, and an hour earlier than the capital's 21:00.

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. 5 in full, read against περ. 4 and the closing clause on duration

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and there is nothing to buy. Case 5 permits and prohibits by hour and by gross weight and names no fee, no day pass, no permit price and no toll; there is no way offered to pay for an hour it closes. The only figure of money in the whole instrument is the penalty for breaching it, which is a fine and not a tariff, and it is recorded in the penalty field.

There is no scheme to register with either: the six exemptions of part II are self-executing descriptions of vehicles and errands, and unlike two of its neighbours Galatsi's own case adds no exemption of any kind.

When it operates

Every day of the week, including weekends. In the Municipality of Galatsi the decision fixes a supply timetable for the town's shops running from 20:00 to 07:00 the following morning, and in that window any type of goods vehicle may carry it out.

For the remaining hours of the day — 07:00 to 20:00 — the resupply is to be carried out with vehicles of gross weight up to two (2) tonnes, and that is the restriction: between 07:00 and 20:00 the decision names no goods vehicle over two tonnes gross that may resupply a shop in Galatsi.

That is a thirteen-hour closed span, the longest of the four suburban cases in this decision, because Galatsi's window opens an hour later than Ilioupoli's, Dafni-Ymittos's and Irakleio Attikis's. No day of the week is named as different, no public holiday, no season and no August, so the same clock runs on a Sunday in January and a Tuesday in August.

The case grants no exemption for shops with their own loading space — Ilioupoli's case and Irakleio Attikis's do, and Galatsi's does not, which is a difference inside one instrument rather than an omission in this record.

Beyond Galatsi the same instrument sets different clocks for its neighbours: Athens runs 21:00 to 09:00, Ilioupoli and Dafni-Ymittos and Irakleio Attikis 19:00 to 07:00, and Piraeus and Byronas 24 hours a day except 07:00 to 10:30. None of those 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. 5 in full: «Στον Δήμο Γαλατσίου για την τροφοδοσία των καταστημάτων (super markets) της πόλης, καθορίζεται ωράριο τροφοδοσίας από τις 20:00 έως και 07.00 της επόμενης, για κάθε τύπο φορτηγού οχήματος. Για τις υπόλοιπες ώρες της ημέρας, ο ανεφοδιασμός τους θα διενεργείται με οχήματα μικτού βάρους μέχρι δύο (2) τόνων.» The neighbouring clocks quoted for contrast are περ. 2.α, 3, 4 and 6 of the same part and the two 2025 supplements

Area covered

The whole Municipality of Galatsi, not a drawn zone inside it. The case says «Στον Δήμο Γαλατσίου» and stops there: it names no perimeter, no gate, no street and no commercial centre, so the boundary of this rule is the municipal boundary.

That is the Δήμος Γαλατσίου of the Attica Region, a level-7 authority in the Central Athens regional unit, immediately north-east of the City of Athens and distinct from it — the Athens case of the same decision does not reach into it, and this case does not reach into Athens.

Its anchor lies 4.22 km north-east of the Athens anchor this corpus holds, and that distance is the only spatial fact here that rests on a measurement. We hold no boundary for this municipality — the Overpass check that would have measured how far it reaches could not be run, and the record says so in boundary_coverage — and we do not name its neighbours, because the decision does not.

The shape is what a driver needs: a municipal edge inside a built-up conurbation, not signed as a traffic boundary, with differently timed municipalities on the other side of it. One narrowing is written into the case itself and it is about what is being supplied rather than where.

The text fixes the timetable «για την τροφοδοσία των καταστημάτων (super markets) της πόλης» — for the supply of the town's shops — where the Athens case of the same instrument says «των επιχειρήσεων, υπεραγορών και λοιπών καταστημάτων», businesses, supermarkets and other shops.

The heading of part I is the broader phrase and the recitals treat all eight cases as one exercise, so the narrower wording may be shorthand rather than a limit; the decision does not resolve it and neither do we. What can be said is what the case says, and this record does not extend it to premises the case does not name.

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. 5 («Στον Δήμο Γαλατσίου για την τροφοδοσία των καταστημάτων (super markets) της πόλης»), read against the heading of μέρος Ι («ΩΡΑΡΙΟ ΤΡΟΦΟΔΟΣΙΑΣ ΕΠΙΧΕΙΡΗΣΕΩΝ, ΥΠΕΡΑΓΟΡΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΛΟΙΠΩΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΜΑΤΩΝ (SUPER MARKETS, ΠΟΛΥΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΜΑΤΑ, ΑΛΥΣΙΔΕΣ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΜΑΤΩΝ)») and against περ. 2.α for the Athens wording

Why there is no map here
There is no map to hold, because the rule was never drawn. The case addresses «Στον Δήμο Γαλατσίου» 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, 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 case actually says.

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

Petrol standard

There is no emission standard in this scheme. The decision sorts vehicles by gross weight and by nothing else: fuel, Euro class, engine age and exhaust certification appear nowhere in the operative text, so no sticker and no clean engine buys a goods vehicle over two tonnes into Galatsi between 07:00 and 20:00.

The recitals do talk about air pollution — the Regional Council records that peak-hour traffic raises measured pollutant values and that cutting peak traffic will help — but what the operative text makes of that is a weight and a clock, not an emission class.

The one vehicle-technology exemption in the instrument 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, 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 of the Galatsi day.

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. Part III 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. Part III is written once and governs all eight municipalities, so Galatsi has no separate penalty to find.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, 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. ⚠️ 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 Galatsi case 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 here at any hour of any day. Above it, the decision gives you one window and it is the night one.
  • The window is 20:00 to 07:00 the next morning, every day of the week, and in it any type of goods vehicle may carry out the supply. Between 07:00 and 20:00 the decision names no goods vehicle over two tonnes gross that may do it. That is an hour later than the neighbouring suburbs open, so a lorry working a round of Attica deliveries cannot treat the four suburban cases as one clock.
  • 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 shops; nothing here restricts private traffic, and nothing here is a low-emission zone.
  • Do not expect the own-loading-bay exemption here. Case 4 (Ilioupoli) and case 8 (Irakleio Attikis) of this decision exempt shops that have their own loading and unloading space from keeping the timetable; case 5, which is Galatsi, contains no such sentence. A private yard does not, on the face of this decision, buy a daytime delivery in Galatsi.
  • 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 Athens 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.
  • Do not carry a neighbouring municipality's clock into Galatsi or Galatsi's clock out of it. The same decision gives Athens 21:00 to 09:00, Ilioupoli and Dafni-Ymittos and Irakleio Attikis 19:00 to 07:00, and Piraeus and Byronas 24 hours a day except 07:00 to 10:30, and in Piraeus it adds a separate circulation ban measured in useful load rather than gross weight. Galatsi has none of those, and they have none of Galatsi's.
  • The fine is not in the decision. Part III 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.

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