Driving in Sifnos: Heavy vehicle ban

Sifnos, Greece · Heavy vehicle ban

Official name Απαγόρευση της διέλευσης οχημάτων βαρέως τύπου, άνω των 3,5 τόνων, από το κέντρο της Απολλωνίας Δήμου Σίφνου (απόφ. Δ.Σ. 67/2025, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026)

What applies

For two months of every summer, heavy vehicles are barred from the centre of Apollonia, the capital of the Cycladic island of Sifnos.

The rule is one clause of a decision gazetted on 13 July 2026: «την απαγόρευση της διέλευσης οχημάτων βαρέως τύπου, άνω των 3,5 τόνων από το κέντρο της Απολλωνίας Δήμου Σίφνου, από 1η Ιουλίου έως και 31 Αυγούστου για κάθε έτος» — a ban on the passage of heavy vehicles, over 3.5 tonnes, from the centre of Apollonia, from 1 July to 31 August every year.

One sign is ordered, at the Greek national grid point 563832 4091983, and its code is Ρ-24. 🔑 This is a different question from the pedestrian closures on the same island and in the same act, which is why it is a separate record: there, the question is where you are driving; here it is what you are driving. A car is never in this scheme at any hour of any day.

What is in it is a motorhome above 3.5 tonnes, a hired Luton van, a horsebox, a builder's tipper — and on a small island in high summer, the traffic this is plainly aimed at is delivery and construction. 🚨 There is a contradiction between the act's words and the sign it orders, and it matters to anyone near the threshold. The act says «άνω των 3,5 τόνων» of a heavy vehicle, which reads naturally as gross weight.

The Highway Code defines Ρ-24 as «Απαγορεύεται η είσοδος σε οχήματα βάρους ανά άξονα που υπερβαίνει τους … τόνους» — vehicles whose weight **per axle** exceeds the stated figure — and gives gross weight its own separate sign, Ρ-23. Three and a half tonnes per axle and three and a half tonnes in total are very different vehicles.

We record what the publisher printed and do not resolve it; a driver at 3.6 tonnes gross on two axles cannot safely assume either reading. ⚠️ As with every closure in this act, the daily hours are not published.

The clause orders the sign «μαζί με τις απαραίτητες πρόσθετες πληροφοριακές πινακίδες για την περίοδο και το ωράριο εφαρμογής», with supplementary plates for the period **and the hours**, and prints only the period. ⚠️ And the act's third condition makes the measure effective «από την τοποθέτηση των οικείων πινακίδων σήμανσης», from the day the signs go up, without saying when that is.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item, clause Β.2): the decision of the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Αιγαίου partly approving decision 67/2025 (ΑΔΑ: 9ΖΚΔΩ1Τ-Ψ28) of the Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο Σίφνου. Signed at Piraeus on 7 July 2026 by Κωνσταντίνος Ντουφεξής - Αμουργιανός, deputy head of the Διεύθυνση Τεχνικού Ελέγχου; read together with ν. 5209/2025 (ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025) article 7 §5 κγ) and κδ) for the difference between signs Ρ-23 and Ρ-24

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and there is nothing to buy.

The clause bans a class of vehicle for a season and orders one sign; it sets no tariff, no permit, no haulier's registration and no fee of any kind, and neither does any other part of the act. ⚠️ Absence of a charge is not absence of a consequence: the price of driving in is in `penalty`, and it is a fine plus a licence measure rather than a ticket you can buy in advance. 🔑 What this project cannot rule out is an exemption or a permit route hidden in the municipality's own pedestrianisation regulation — council decision 65/2025, ΑΔΑ 6ΞΖ7Ω1Τ-ΗΝΚ — which the act defers to for its other clauses and which we cannot reach.

The gazetted act contains no money and no permit; we do not claim the unread regulation contains none either.

When it operates

The season is published exactly and the clock is not. The act says the ban runs «από 1η Ιουλίου έως και 31 Αυγούστου για κάθε έτος» — from 1 July to and including 31 August, every year — which makes it the shortest of the seasonal restrictions in this act and the only one confined to the two peak months.

The five pedestrian closures elsewhere on the island run 1 April to 30 October and Artemonas runs 1 June to 30 September; none of those seasons may be read onto this one. 🚨 The time of day is missing, and the act says in so many words that it exists.

The clause orders the vertical sign «μαζί με τις απαραίτητες πρόσθετες πληροφοριακές πινακίδες για την περίοδο και το ωράριο εφαρμογής» — with the necessary supplementary informational plates for the period **and the hours** of application. A gazette that names an ωράριο and prints only the period is telling you the hours are set elsewhere. 🚫 We do not hold that elsewhere.

The act's preamble identifies the municipality's governing instrument as «την υπ' αρ.

65/2025 (ΑΔΑ: 6ΞΖ7Ω1Τ-ΗΝΚ) απόφαση του Δημοτικού Συμβουλίου Σίφνου περί Κανονισμού Λειτουργίας Πεζοδρόμησης του Δήμου Σίφνου», which is not reproduced in the gazette and is not on the municipality's website — sifnos.gr is a fifty-five-page tourism site whose search returns nothing for ωράριο, κανονισμ or κυκλοφοριακ, and sifnos.gov.gr and dimossifnou.gr do not resolve in DNS.

The ΑΔΑ points at Διαύγεια, which is closed to this project by its own robots.txt and is respected as closed. 🔑 There is a further reason not to assume the pedestrianisation regulation settles it: that regulation governs πεζοδρόμηση, and this clause is not a pedestrianisation. It is a weight ban, approved in the same breath and signed with a different sign.

Whether its hours come from the same document, from a separate order or only from the plate on the post, the act does not say.

That is why this record carries no machine-readable timetable: the two months are certain, the hour is not, and encoding a guess as a window would be the one thing this project must never do. ⚠️ Nothing in the act mentions public holidays, so nothing in it lifts the ban on one — including the Assumption on 15 August, which falls inside the season and is one of the busiest days of the Greek year.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item, clause Β.2), for the season and for the sentence ordering supplementary plates carrying the hours; and item 7 of the same act's preamble, for the identity of the municipal regulation the act's other clauses defer to

Area covered

«Το κέντρο της Απολλωνίας» — the centre of Apollonia — and one surveyed point, and that is the whole of the published extent. The act prints a one-row table, ΧΨΠΙΝΑΚΙΔΑ, giving 563832 4091983 in ΕΓΣΑ 87, the Greek national grid in metres, and the sign Ρ-24.

It calls the coordinate «ενδεικτική», indicative. 🔑 The point is not inside the pedestrianised street this act also creates: the Στενό closure at Apollonia is signed at 564247 4091962, about 415 m further east on the same grid northing.

So the weight ban and the pedestrianisation are two different places in the same village, and a driver should not treat the Ρ-24 post as marking the entrance to the pedestrian zone. ⚠️ Where the banned area begins and ends is not in the document. «The centre of Apollonia» is a description, not a perimeter, and a single sign point says which approach is signed, not how far the prohibition reaches or whether the other approaches into the village are signed at all.

If there is only one post, there is only one signed way in, and the act does not say whether that is the intention or the extent of the works so far. 🚨 The sign code contradicts the act's own words, and this is the most important thing on the record after the season. ν.

5209/2025 article 7 §5 defines the two weight signs separately: κγ) «Ρ-23: Απαγορεύεται η είσοδος σε οχήματα συνολικού βάρους που υπερβαίνει τους … (π.χ. 5) τόνους» — total, gross weight — and κδ) «Ρ-24: Απαγορεύεται η είσοδος σε οχήματα βάρους ανά άξονα που υπερβαίνει τους … (π.χ. 2) τόνους» — weight **per axle**.

The act's sentence, «οχημάτων βαρέως τύπου, άνω των 3,5 τόνων», reads as gross weight and matches Ρ-23; the sign it orders is Ρ-24. A two-axle vehicle at 6 tonnes gross and 3 tonnes per axle is caught by one reading and not by the other.

We publish the threshold the act states, 3.5 tonnes, and state the sign it ordered, and we do not choose between them — the plate on the actual post will carry a figure, and that figure is what an officer reads.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item, clause Β.2), for the description of the area and the coordinate table, and clause Β.1) for the Apollonia pedestrianisation point it is compared with; read together with ν. 5209/2025 (ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025) article 7 §5, which defines Ρ-23 at κγ) and Ρ-24 at κδ)

Why there is no map here
The published extent is one prose phrase and one surveyed point: «το κέντρο της Απολλωνίας» and 563832 4091983 in ΕΓΣΑ 87, which the act itself calls «ενδεικτική». Our boundary contract is a MultiPolygon, and a single coordinate locates a signpost rather than an area. Turning it into one would mean inventing where the centre of a village begins and ends — our line, not the municipality's — and the gap is wider here than on the companion pedestrianisation record, because there the point at least sits on a named road while here the regulated thing is a district described in two words. 🚫 It does NOT heal by reading the gazette more carefully: the one-row table is the whole of the published geometry, the issue carries no site plan for this item, and the text is fully readable (scripts/check-strings.mjs: «holds», 8 content streams, 25 483 characters extracted). ✅ It heals if the Δήμος Σίφνου publishes the technical service's study as geometry, or if a later act replaces «the centre of Apollonia» with a described perimeter or a list of signed approaches. ⚠️ Neither could be asked for in this cycle: sifnos.gr is a tourism site with no administrative section and no traffic pages, sifnos.gov.gr and dimossifnou.gr do not resolve in DNS, and Διαύγεια, where council decision 67/2025 (ΑΔΑ: 9ΖΚΔΩ1Τ-Ψ28) sits, is closed by its own robots.txt and is respected as closed. map_url therefore points at the gazette issue itself, which is where the published extent actually is — as one row of one small table rather than as a drawing, and a reader should know that before clicking.

The authority's own map: Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Αιγαίου / Δήμος Σίφνου, Τμήμα Τεχνικών Υπηρεσιών Δόμησης…

Petrol standard

This scheme sets no emission threshold, and the absence is structural rather than unrecorded. The clause asks one question about a vehicle — how much it weighs — and asks nothing about what comes out of the exhaust. A Euro 6 lorry is barred exactly as a Euro 1 one is, and a Euro 1 car is not barred at all.

Greece publishes no national low-emission scheme of the Italian or German kind that this project has read, and this record makes no claim either way about one.

Diesel standard

The same as for petrol, and for the same structural reason: the act contains no emission class of any kind, for any fuel. Almost every vehicle this scheme catches will in practice be a diesel, but that is a fact about the haulage fleet and not a term of the rule — the rule is about tonnes.

Penalty if you do not comply
€150.00 The act prints no figure; the €150 is read from the statute, and it is the fine alone. Article 7 §11 ε) of ν. 5209/2025 classifies non-compliance with signs «Ρ-7, Ρ-8, Ρ-9, Ρ-10, Ρ-11, Ρ-12, Ρ-13, Ρ-14, Ρ-18, Ρ-19, Ρ-20, Ρ-21, Ρ-22, Ρ-23, Ρ-24, Ρ-25, Ρ-26, Ρ-27, Ρ-28, Ρ-30, Ρ-31, Ρ-45, Ρ-46, Ρ-64…» — Ρ-24 among them — in category **Ε2-Β**, and article 108 §5 β) ββ) says that for an Ε2-Β breach «επιβάλλεται το διοικητικό πρόστιμο της υποκατηγορίας Ε2-Α», which α) βα) fixes at «εκατόν πενήντα (150) ευρώ», «και το διοικητικό μέτρο αφαίρεσης της άδειας οδήγησης για είκοσι (20) ημέρες». 🚨 So the real cost is €150 **and twenty days without a driving licence**, and for a driver whose living is behind a wheel the twenty days are the larger half by a wide margin. Ρ-24 is not classified in category Σ, so the further forty-day measure that attaches to the pedestrian-street offences on this island does not attach here. ⚠️ Whether a heavier consequence exists for a goods vehicle specifically, this record does not say. The Code's article 57 §5 carves out «φορτηγά αυτοκίνητα για τα οποία εφαρμόζεται ο ν. 3446/2006» from one of its own weight provisions, and that statute — on road-transport enforcement — is outside what was read for this record. The €150 and the twenty days are what the Highway Code attaches to disobeying this sign; we do not claim they are the only consequence a professional operator faces. ⚠️ And the threshold question reaches the penalty too. If an officer enforces the sign as printed on the post, what is enforced is the figure on that plate, which the gazette does not reproduce.Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025: ν. 5209/2025 «Κώδικας Οδικής Κυκλοφορίας», the Highway Code in force since 13 September 2025 and the Code this act proceeds under. Article 7 §5 κδ) defines sign Ρ-24; article 7 §11 ε) classifies non-compliance with it in category Ε2-Β; article 108 §5 β) prices category Ε2 — βα) Ε2-Α at €150 and ββ) Ε2-Β at that fine plus twenty days' withdrawal of the driving licence; §3 and §5 δ) govern the additional measure for category Σ, which Ρ-24 does not carry

How to comply
  • If your vehicle is under 3.5 tonnes you are not in this scheme at all, on any day of the year. A car, a small campervan or a standard hire car is unaffected — though the pedestrian closures elsewhere on Sifnos, on their own record, may still apply to you.
  • If you are over 3.5 tonnes, stay out of the centre of Apollonia between 1 July and 31 August. That is the whole of the season the act publishes, and it is shorter than every other restriction on the island: the ban does not exist in June or in September.
  • ⚠️ We cannot tell you the hours and you should assume nothing from the season. The clause orders supplementary plates carrying «την περίοδο και το ωράριο εφαρμογής» — the period and the hours — and the gazette prints the period only. Read the plate under the sign; it is the only place the hours are written where a driver can see them.
  • 🚨 If you are near the threshold, do not assume which weight is meant. The act bans «οχημάτων βαρέως τύπου, άνω των 3,5 τόνων», which reads as gross weight, but the sign it orders is Ρ-24, which the Highway Code defines as a **per-axle** limit; the gross-weight sign is Ρ-23 and was not ordered. At 3.6 tonnes gross on two axles you are caught on one reading and clear on the other, and nothing in the published act decides it.
  • Look at the plate on the post rather than at this page for the number. Whatever figure is printed under the sign is the figure an officer reads, and the gazette does not reproduce it.
  • There is one signed point, at Greek grid 563832 4091983, and the act does not say whether it is the only way in. «The centre of Apollonia» is a description and not a perimeter, so treat an unsigned approach as unresolved rather than as permitted.
  • ⚠️ If the post is bare, the rule has not started yet. The act's third condition makes the measures effective «από την τοποθέτηση των οικείων πινακίδων σήμανσης, των σηματοδοτών ή των διαγραμμίσεων στο οδόστρωμα» — from the installation of the signs — and gives no date for that.
  • ⚠️ The cost of getting it wrong is €150 and twenty days without your driving licence. Non-compliance with sign Ρ-24 is a category Ε2-Β breach of the Greek Highway Code, and Ε2-Β carries the €150 fine together with a twenty-day administrative withdrawal of the licence. For an operator, that second half is the one that hurts.
  • There is nothing to buy and nowhere to buy it. No permit, no exemption procedure, no delivery window and no charge appears anywhere in the act — but note that the act defers its other clauses to a municipal regulation we cannot read, so this is the absence of a published permit rather than proof that no arrangement exists. If you deliver on Sifnos for a living, ask the Δήμος Σίφνου directly.
  • ⚠️ The municipality's website will not confirm any of this. sifnos.gr is the Δήμος Σίφνου tourism site and carries no traffic regulations; there is no separate administrative host, as sifnos.gov.gr and dimossifnou.gr do not resolve in DNS. This record rests on the national gazette and on the Highway Code. If a sign on the ground says something different from this page, the sign is the law.
Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item, clause Β.2), for the threshold, the season, the sign, the coordinate, the supplementary-plate sentence and the commencement condition; read together with ν. 5209/2025 (ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025) article 7 §5 κγ) and κδ) for the difference between Ρ-23 and Ρ-24, article 7 §11 ε) for the category, and article 108 §5 β) for the fine and the licence measure

Sources

Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-22.

Before you set off

Also in Sifnos

A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.

Other cities in Greece

And 35 more in Greece