Overview
- Hamburg’s rot‑green Senate approved a draft law to phase out paper permits and enable licence‑plate–based enforcement.
- The measure now awaits a Bürgerschaft vote, with a proposed 12‑month pilot next year in two resident zones covering about 13,000 spaces.
- Scan vehicles would record plates and match them to digital authorisations, with compliant images deleted immediately and no veto from the city’s data protection officer.
- Flagged cases would trigger visits by field officers because some permits, such as disabled parking, are linked to people rather than vehicles.
- A later step would retrofit pay machines for licence‑plate entry, as officials point to trials in Baden‑Württemberg claiming up to 1,000 checks per hour and to uptake in cities like Rotterdam, Paris, Rome and Warsaw.