Skopje, North Macedonia · Limited traffic zone
Official name Пешачки површини и зони забранети за сообраќај на подрачјето на град Скопје
In force in Skopje right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:05 · Europe/Skopje
This encoding says when the ban is in force, not where you are. We hold no geometry for the zone; the decision names six surfaces in words and no authority publishes their outline, so the warning is at city level and the edge has to be read on the ground.
The delivery windows in article 5 are conditions on permitted activity, not windows in the ban, and they are deliberately not encoded. 05:00 to 10:00 belongs to a goods vehicle that already holds the City's permit; encoding it would tell an unpermitted driver they may enter at 06:00, which is the opposite of the rule.
Three of the decision's four zones are not encoded at all. The narrow city area, the wider city area and the public-transport streets restrict stopping and parking, which is a parking rule; only the pedestrian surfaces of article 4(3) forbid driving in.
No weekday, weekend or public-holiday rule is encoded, because the decision names none. Every window in it is expressly 'секој ден'. North Macedonia has public holidays and this instrument does not mention one; no Macedonian holiday calendar is held in this corpus, and inventing an exemption would be worse than having none.
Being outside the hours is not the same as being outside the scheme. The trigger is the place — one of the six named pedestrian surfaces — and then the errand: goods delivery under a permit is the only vehicle movement the decision allows there.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
Skopje's restriction is a flat ban on a named handful of central streets, and the only vehicle it lets in is one delivering goods. The instrument is the Одлука за организирање и дефинирање на условите за доставување на стока на подрачјето на град Скопје, made by the Council of the City of Skopje on 18 February 2016 under article 7(2) indent 8 of the national Law on Road Traffic Safety, and amended twice since.
Its article 2 divides the city's public surfaces into four zones, and only one of them is a driving rule at all. Three of the four — the narrow city area bounded by a named ring of boulevards, the wider city area outside it, and the streets carrying public transport — regulate stopping and parking, which is a parking rule rather than an entry rule and is not what this record is about.
The fourth, article 4(3), is: 'пешачки површини' are surfaces on which motor-vehicle traffic is forbidden, except for vehicles moving, stopping and parking in order to deliver goods, and the decision names them one by one. For a driver of an ordinary car the whole scheme reduces to one sentence: on those surfaces you may not drive, at any hour, on any day, and there is nothing you can buy that changes it.
There is no charge, no day ticket, no resident tier and no exemption for a visitor. A goods vehicle is the only exception the decision contemplates, and even that is conditional.
It needs a written odobrenie from the City, issued for at most one year, applied for at the City archive with the vehicle's registration document and a contract with the business receiving the goods, and the application has to name which pedestrian zone it is for.
The City's own counter states what the permit is for in its own words — a controlled traffic regime with recording of the movement of vehicles travelling in zones forbidden to traffic, worked with a system of electronic cards — which is how we know the regime is running rather than dormant.
Once in, a permitted delivery vehicle may stand no longer than 15 minutes, must leave the goods off the pavement, and may only use a pavement at all if 2.5 m is left clear for pedestrians and cyclists; on the pedestrian surfaces its window is 05:00 to 10:00. Two limits apply across every zone. The maximum permitted mass of a delivering vehicle is 12 tonnes.
And the decision never reads an engine: no Euro class, no fuel, no age, no emissions test appears in it or in either amendment, which is why both emission fields here are null rather than filled in.
That is not for want of an air-quality motive — the first amendment, in December 2017, shortened the narrow-area delivery window between 1 December and 31 March expressly 'заради намалување на загадувањето', to reduce pollution. It acted on the clock, not on the vehicle, and the second amendment made that winter window permanent in March 2018 and deleted the seasonal paragraph.
Град Скопје — the City's own service counter for this permit, 'Контролиран режим на сообраќај', run by the Одделение за техничко регулирање на сообраќајот. It names the act the permit is issued under in the City's own words, states the three documents an applicant files, and requires the applicant to identify which pedestrian zone forbidden to traffic the request is for. Held as the evidence that the 2016 decision is operating today rather than lapsed, and as this record's second version pointer: the wording of the permit moves if the regime does
There is no daily charge in this scheme, and there is no charge of any other period either that we can state. Two different kinds of emptiness sit behind this null and both are worth separating. The first is that the thing does not exist: Skopje does not sell access to its pedestrian surfaces by the day, the week or the month.
The decision's only instrument is an odobrenie — a written permission issued under article 10 for a maximum of one year, naming the applicant, the zones, the permitted delivery window, the standing time, the validity and the vehicle's registration number. Nothing in it is priced per entry, and a driver of an ordinary car cannot buy one at all, because the permit exists for delivering goods and for nothing else.
The second is that a figure exists somewhere and we do not hold it. Article 11(3) requires the application to be accompanied by 'доказ за платена административна такса', proof of a paid administrative fee, and the decision states no amount for it, in the base text or in either amendment.
An administrative fee in North Macedonia is set by the national Закон за административни такси rather than by the council, so the number is not the City's to print here and is not in the instrument this record rests on. We have not read that act, so we publish no figure. Not estimated, and deliberately not divided out of anything: a one-year permit fee would not be a daily charge even if we held it (D-131, D-132).
For a car the answer is that there are no hours, because the ban never lifts. Article 4(3) of the decision makes the пешачки површини surfaces on which motor-vehicle traffic is forbidden, and it attaches no time to that: there is no part of any day or week when an ordinary vehicle may drive onto them.
Everything the decision says about the clock is a condition on the one activity it permits, goods delivery, and applies only to a vehicle that already holds the City's permit.
Those windows are article 5, and after the 2018 amendment they read: on the pedestrian surfaces, 05:00 to 10:00; in the narrow city area, 18:00 to 07:30 every day; in the wider city area, 09:00 to 16:00 and 18:00 to 07:00; and on the streets carrying public transport, 20:00 to 07:00. A permitted vehicle may stand only while loading or unloading lasts and in no case longer than 15 minutes.
Article 7 settles the overlap rather than leaving it to the driver: where one street falls in two zones at once and one of them is the public-transport zone, the public-transport rule wins. The narrow-area window is the part of this that has moved, and it moved twice. The 2016 text allowed delivery there from 09:00 to 14:00 and from 18:00 to 07:00.
In December 2017 the Council added a seasonal exception for pollution reduction, 18:00 to 07:30 between 1 December and 31 March. In March 2018 it replaced the whole paragraph with that same 18:00 to 07:30 window all year round and deleted the seasonal paragraph, which is the text in force. A driver who reads only the 2016 decision reads a 09:00 to 14:00 window that has not existed since 21 March 2018.
Nothing in the decision distinguishes a weekday from a weekend — every window is expressly 'секој ден', every day — and nothing in it names a public holiday. North Macedonia has public holidays; this instrument does not mention one, no Macedonian holiday calendar is held in this corpus, and none is encoded.
Совет на Град Скопје — the Одлука за организирање и дефинирање на условите за доставување на стока на подрачјето на град Скопје, adopted at the Council's 61st session on 18 February 2016 and published in Службен гласник на Град Скопје year 2016 number 2 of 19 February 2016, act number 07-1223/1. Article 5 is the timetable and article 7 the overlap rule. ⚠️ Its paragraph 5(2) is NOT the text in force: the 2018 amendment replaced it, and both amendments are in this record's source list. The gazette is bilingual, Macedonian then Albanian, and the Albanian text carries the same articles
The decision names its surfaces in words rather than drawing them, and for the part that bans driving the list is six entries long. Article 4(3) makes these the пешачки површини on which motor-vehicle traffic is forbidden: ул. Македонија, from ул.
Даме Груев to the start of Плоштад Македонија; ул. 11 Октомври, from Порта Македонија to the start of Плоштад Македонија; ул. Никола Вапцаров; Кеј 13 Ноември, from бул.
Филип II Македонски to the start of Плоштад Македонија; Стара Скопска Чаршија, the old bazaar on the north bank; and Филип 2-ри Македонски. That is the walkable core on both sides of the Vardar, and the corroboration is a second act of the same Council: the 2014 decision setting conditions for the electric shuttles of ЈП Градски паркинг describes the central pedestrian zones as ул. Македонија, Плоштад Македонија, ул.
11 Октомври up to Порта Македонија, Камен мост, ул. Црвена скопска општина, Плоштад Карпошово востание, Кеј 13 Ноември and the Око bridge — the same ground, named independently two years earlier, and it limits even those shuttles to walking pace between 10:00 and 19:00.
The other three zones of article 4 are stopping-and-parking areas rather than driving bans, and one of them is written as a perimeter, which is worth recording because it is the only line the decision actually draws. The потесно градско подрачје is bounded by бул. Илинден from ул.
Франклин Рузвелт to бул. Гоце Делчев, бул. Гоце Делчев to ул.
Лазар Личеновски, ул. Лазар Личеновски, бул. Никола Карев to ул.
Беласица, ул. Беласица, ул. Никола Карев to бул.
3-та Македонска бригада, that boulevard to ул. Пролет, ул. Пролет to бул.
Македонија, бул. Македонија to ул. Павел Шатев, ул.
Павел Шатев to ул. Јордан Мијалков, ул. Јордан Мијалков, ул.
Васил Ѓоргов to ул. Франклин Рузвелт, and ул. Франклин Рузвелт.
The wider city area is then everything outside that ring, and the fourth zone is a list of nineteen boulevards and streets carrying public transport. No map of any of this is published. The City's GIS portal serves general urban planning and citizen layers, and the only traffic document on the City's own site is a 36-page freight-routing drawing set in which no page yields extractable text — a raster, not a dataset.
OpenStreetMap holds nothing either: an Overpass query for boundary=low_emission_zone and boundary=toll relations and ways within 20 km of the city anchor returns zero objects. So the place has to be read from the street names above and from the signs, and this record does not draw a ring through them.
Совет на Град Скопје — the Одлука за организирање и дефинирање на условите за доставување на стока, Службен гласник на Град Скопје 2/16 of 19 February 2016. Article 4 is the whole geography of the scheme: paragraph 1 the boulevard ring of the narrow city area, paragraph 3 the six pedestrian surfaces where driving is forbidden, paragraph 4 the nineteen public-transport streets. Article 4 has not been amended — the two later decisions touch article 5 only
There is no emission standard in this scheme for a petrol vehicle, because there is no emission standard in it at all. The decision reads two things off a vehicle and neither is an exhaust: its maximum permitted mass, which article 6 caps at 12 tonnes in every one of the four zones, and the errand it is on, which is whether it is delivering goods to a business that has contracted for the delivery.
Euro class, year of first registration, fuel type and any emissions measurement appear nowhere in the base decision, nowhere in the 2017 amendment and nowhere in the 2018 one.
The negative was also taken the other way, against the publisher rather than against the act: a full-text search of the City's entire electronic gazette, 1999 to September 2026, for ЕУРО* returns 33 documents, and every one of them is a fuel-procurement decision for the public transport company, an environmental programme, a vehicle-purchase approval or the name of an association — not one is a restriction keyed to a vehicle's emission class.
A petrol car is refused entry to the pedestrian surfaces on exactly the same terms as any other car, and admitted on none. Not estimated: this is what the published text does not contain, read across the base decision and both amendments in full.
Nor a diesel standard, and the reason is the same measured one: the question this scheme asks is where you are driving and what you are carrying, never what comes out of the engine. Nothing in the decision or its two amendments separates diesel from petrol, sets a Euro floor or asks for a smoke-opacity result.
What makes this worth stating rather than passing over is that the pollution motive is right there in the text and still did not become a vehicle test. The December 2017 amendment inserted its winter delivery window expressly 'заради намалување на загадувањето' — to reduce pollution — and Skopje has some of the worst winter air in Europe.
The Council's answer was to move the lorries to the night, not to read their engines, and in March 2018 it made that night window permanent for the whole year. A diesel car is treated by this instrument exactly as a petrol one is. Not estimated.
The decision sets no penalty, and that is a property of the instrument rather than a gap in our reading. Its structure is four numbered parts — the conditions, the permit, supervision and the closing provisions — and the supervision part is a single sentence: article 12 gives inspection oversight of the decision to the Секторот Инспекторат на Град Скопје, the City's own inspectorate.
There is no казнена одредба, no figure, no range and no band anywhere in the base text or in either amendment, which is consistent with what the decision is: an act of a council made under article 7(2) indent 8 of the Закон за безбедност на сообраќајот на патиштата, where the offence and the fine for ignoring a traffic prohibition live in that national act rather than in the municipal one.
We have not read the national act — its publisher, www.slvesnik.com.mk, resets the connection during the TLS handshake from this network and nothing about it has been measured (B-068) — so we hold no figure and publish none. Not estimated, and deliberately not borrowed from another country's scheme.
Град Скопје — 'Контролиран режим на сообраќај', the City's own service page for this permit, giving the issuing unit, the responsible officer, the counter hours, the three-step procedure and the documents required. Held for the procedure; the windows, the mass limit and the 15-minute rule in this list come from the decision itself, which is in this record's source list
Совет на Град Скопје — the full text of the Одлука за организирање и дефинирање на условите за доставување на стока на подрачјето на град Скопје, adopted at the Council's 61st session on 18 February 2016 under article 36 of the Закон за локалната самоуправа and article 7(2) indent 8 of the Закон за безбедност на сообраќајот на патиштата, published in Службен гласник на Град Скопје year 2016 number 2 of 19 February 2016 as act 07-1223/1, and in force from the day of publication under its article 13. The base of the chain: article 4 is the geography, article 5 the timetable, article 6 the 12-tonne mass limit, articles 10 and 11 the permit, article 12 the City Inspectorate. ⚠️ Its article 5(2) has since been replaced and the replacement, not this text, is what this record states
Совет на Град Скопје — the first Одлука за изменување и дополнување на Одлуката за организирање и дефинирање на условите за доставување на стока, adopted at the Council's third session on 19 December 2017 and published in Службен гласник на Град Скопје year 2017 number 12 of 20 December 2017 as act 07-9620/1. Held because it is the pollution motive stated in the Council's own words: it added a new article 5(2А) shortening the narrow-area delivery window to 18:00–07:30 between 1 December and 31 March, expressly 'заради намалување на загадувањето'. That paragraph was itself deleted three months later, so this text is history rather than law — kept because it is the evidence that Skopje's answer to its winter air was a clock and never an engine
Совет на Град Скопје — the second Одлука за изменување и дополнување на Одлуката за организирање и дефинирање на условите за доставување на стока, adopted at the Council's eighth session on 19 March 2018 and published in Службен гласник на Град Скопје year 2018 number 4 of 21 March 2018 as act 27-2471/1. This is the operative text of the timetable and the reason the 2016 decision must not be read alone: it replaces article 5(2) with a year-round 18:00–07:30 window for the narrow city area and deletes the seasonal paragraph 2А the 2017 amendment had added. The 09:00–14:00 window a reader would take from the base text has not existed since the day this was published
Град Скопје — the Електронски службен гласник, the City's own gazette, searched over its full text for the phrase in the title of this decision and of both its amendments. This is the record's version pointer and its denominator in one. The search was controlled before it was trusted, four probes rather than three: 'сообраќај' returns results, 'zzqqxxyy' returns 0, and 'влегува' — a word in the closing article of virtually every act the archive holds and in no title — returns results too, which is how we know it indexes full text and not titles, so a negative from it is a negative about the whole corpus of acts. The archive is current: its newest document is Службен гласник на Град Скопје 9/2026 of 10 September 2026, six days before this reading. The count in the heading is what is watched — 3 documents found, being the base decision and its two amendments. A fourth act amending this decision moves that number to 4 and drops this record to draft
Совет на Град Скопје — the Одлука за утврдување на услови за сообраќај на електромобили во сопственост на ЈП Градски паркинг во зоните на смирен сообраќај и пешачките зони во градот Скопје, adopted 21 May 2014 and published in Службен гласник на Град Скопје year 2014 number 6 of 22 May 2014 as act 07-3393/1. Held as independent corroboration of the geography rather than as a rule for a private car: made two years before the delivery decision and by the same Council, it describes the central pedestrian zones by name — ул. Македонија, Плоштад Македонија, ул. 11 Октомври to Порта Македонија, Камен мост, ул. Црвена скопска општина, Плоштад Карпошово востание, Кеј 13 Ноември and the Око bridge — and limits even the City parking company's own electric shuttles to walking pace between 10:00 and 19:00, which is the clearest statement in the gazette of how the City treats these surfaces
Град Скопје — 'Контролиран режим на сообраќај', the City's own counter for this permit, run by the Одделение за техничко регулирање на сообраќајот with a named officer, a telephone number and counter hours of 08:30–16:30. The evidence that the 2016 decision is in service today: it states the permit in the City's own words as a controlled traffic regime with recording of the movement of vehicles travelling in zones forbidden to traffic, worked with a system of electronic cards, and it requires an applicant to name which pedestrian zone forbidden to traffic the request concerns
Next scheduled re-check: 2027-03-19.