Germany:Vehicles entering Berlin's inner city after tomorrow will require a special windscreen sticker as part of a plan to reduce air pollution.
The new sticker system, which classifies vehicles by their exhaust levels, effectively bans from the city centre all older cars and trucks without catalytic convertors or diesel exhaust filters.
Authorities hope the plan will reduce levels of fine particulate dust in the air - considered a serious health risk by the European Commission.
All cars entering Berlin's inner city - including those driven by foreign visitors - will require a red, yellow, or green sticker depending on the engine type and emission levels.
The stickers, available at the vehicle registration centre and garages, cost €5. Anyone caught without a sticker - or driving a banned vehicle - faces a €40 fine.
From tomorrow the city centre of Berlin - the area surrounded by the circle train line - will be classified as an "environmental zone" open only to stickered vehicles.
Cologne and Hanover also join the scheme tomorrow while most other German cities will follow suit during the year.
The move has been controversial because it bans from inner cities an estimated 1.7 million vehicles, according to figures supplied by the ADAC, Germany's equivalent of the AA.
The organisation is considering a legal challenge to the scheme on behalf of its members, claiming that cars produce just 5 per cent of fine particle dust. But Berlin authorities have brushed off ADAC criticisms.
Although low tech, the three-tier sticker system allows them to control what vehicles go where in the city centre.
A European Commission study published last year estimated that 310,000 people fall ill every year in the EU as a result of inhaling harmful particulate matter. The study estimates that 1,000 of these cases occur in Ireland.
In Berlin an estimated 1.2 million car owners require one of the new stickers. After leaving it to the last minute, many drivers complained yesterday that garages were sold out of them until after the holidays.
Although traffic police will give warnings rather than fines in the first month, many risk-averse Berlin drivers say they will play it safe.
"I suppose I will just have to leave the car at home until I get a sticker," said Berliner Stefan Peggau.
It's not just black exhaust clouds that will vanish in Berlin from tomorrow - the German capital and many other states finally introduce a smoking ban in bars and restaurants.