Overview
- The draft Fifth Amendment to the Road Traffic Act would establish legal bases for digital driver’s licences and vehicle documents, authorize digital parking enforcement, expand digital registration certificates, enable KBA data queries by vehicle identification number, and penalize commercial “points trading.”
- The Bundestag held a short debate on 16 January and referred the bill to committees for further work, with the transport committee leading the review.
- Municipal enforcement could deploy camera-equipped scan vehicles that read licence plates and automatically verify digital permits, with reported throughput of several hundred to around 1,000 checks per run.
- The government projects roughly €150 million in one-off public implementation costs, about €4 million in annual running costs, and estimated yearly savings of around €8 million for municipalities that adopt digital parking control.
- The Greens support the push and seek socially tiered resident-parking fees plus a secure nationwide digital solution for disability permits, while the AfD opposes the plan over surveillance concerns.