Euro emissions standards

Three documents, in a fixed order. The Euro status entry at V.9 of the V5C is first, because it records the Euro status DVLA holds. The free DVLA vehicle enquiry service shows the same field from the registration number, with no account and no fee. If V.9 names a stage, that is the answer a clean air zone will use.

The certificate of conformity is second. It is the manufacturer's own type approval document, and it is what an operating authority will accept when V.9 is blank or wrong. A franchised dealer can usually raise a copy from the vehicle identification number. Imports and cars registered close to a stage change are the usual reason you need it.

The first registration date is last, and it is a fallback, not a proof. Each stage in the table below has a date from which a new passenger car could not be registered below it. Reading a year against that date infers the compulsory floor for a new car. It does not catch early certification, and it does not apply those car dates to a van or a motorcycle.

Two clocks, and mixing them up is how a 2005 petrol car gets sold as a ULEZ pass. New types have to meet a stage first. About a year later, every new car has to meet it to be registered. The registration date is the one that matches a DVLA record. The type approval date is the one that explains why some cars hold the next stage early.

Euro 1 type approval starts on 1 July 1992, with new registrations from 31 December 1992. Euro 2 moves from 1 January 1996 to 1 January 1997. Euro 3 from 1 January 2000 to 1 January 2001. Euro 4 from 1 January 2005 to 1 January 2006. Euro 5 from 1 September 2009 to 1 January 2011. Euro 6 from 1 September 2014 to 1 September 2015. Euro 7 from 29 November 2026 to 29 November 2027 in the EU and Northern Ireland; Great Britain has not yet adopted it.

Those are passenger car dates, stored once in this dataset and reused by the clean air zone checker. They line up with Transport for London's wording: petrol cars that meet the ULEZ standard are generally those first registered as new after 2005, diesel cars generally those first registered as new after September 2015. TfL still goes on the declared emissions rather than the age.

The London ULEZ, the English clean air zones and the Scottish low emission zones all use the same pair for cars: Euro 4 from petrol and Euro 6 from diesel. There is no zone in this dataset with a tighter car standard and none with a looser one. That is why a 2007 petrol car can drive in free while a 2014 diesel pays.

The reason is nitrogen oxides on diesel. Euro 6 cut the diesel nitrogen oxide limit from 0.18 g/km at Euro 5 to 0.08 g/km. Converted from that g/km table those figures are 180 mg/km and 80 mg/km, which is the change the Euro 6 page describes as the one the zone system is built on. Petrol had already reached its pass mark at Euro 4, when petrol nitrogen oxides fell to 0.08 g/km.

Scottish low emission zones use the same Euro numbers and a different enforcement model. There is no daily charge as a way in: a non compliant vehicle is not allowed in, and the first camera capture is a penalty. Motorcycles sit outside the Scottish scheme. The London ULEZ does charge motorcycles, against Euro 3, which is not the passenger car Euro 3 date of 1 January 2001.

Real Driving Emissions is an extra diesel test, added because laboratory limits and road nitrogen oxides had drifted apart. RDE2 is the second step of that test. It is not Euro 6, not Euro 7, and not a letter you can read off V.9 the way you read a stage. A car can be Euro 6 and not certified to RDE2.

Clean air zones do not ask for RDE2. They ask for Euro 6 from a diesel car. What RDE2 changes is first year vehicle tax: a diesel first registered after 1 April 2018 that is not certified to RDE2 pays the first year rate of the band above its own. HMRC treats RDE2 and Euro 6d as the same thing for company car tax. The certificate of conformity is the document that shows it.

Letters after Euro 6, such as 6b, 6c, 6d and 6d-TEMP, are substages of Euro 6. No UK car zone in this dataset sets its pass mark finer than the whole number. Paying extra first year tax for missing RDE2 does not put a Euro 6 diesel into the charged column of a clean air zone.

Every date and every g/km figure on this page is a passenger car figure. Vans and motorcycles were given their own type approval instruments and their own introduction dates. This site will not put 1 January 2006 onto a van, or 1 September 2015 onto a motorcycle, because those car dates are not sourced as van or motorcycle dates.

A van is still often asked for the same zone pair as a car, Euro 4 petrol and Euro 6 diesel, in the English and Scottish schemes. That is a pass mark, not an introduction date. Qualifying Euro 4 and Euro 5 vans also have a separate vehicle tax concession window in the light goods tables. That window is a tax class rule, not a clean air zone rule and not the car timetable.

Motorcycles in the London ULEZ are asked for Euro 3. Transport for London's guidance is that Euro 3 motorcycles are generally those registered with the DVLA after July 2007, but the zone goes on the declared emissions rather than the age. Scottish low emission zones leave motorbikes, mopeds and fully electric vehicles outside the rules. A hybrid is judged on its petrol or diesel engine, not on the battery.

This site's clean air zone dataset holds 15 charging schemes. None of them is in Wales. None of them is in Northern Ireland. A Euro 1 petrol car driven in Belfast is not charged by a Northern Ireland clean air zone in this dataset, because no such scheme is stored, not because Euro 1 meets a published Northern Ireland pass mark.

The Euro stage on the V5C does not change at the border. A Euro 5 diesel that pays in Glasgow still holds Euro 5 in Cardiff. What changes is whether anyone is running a camera against that stage. If a scheme is added later, it will appear in the clean air zones list with its own source. Until then this page will not invent one.

The usual myth is that the plate year is the Euro standard. It is close enough to hurt. A petrol car first registered as new in 2007 had to meet Euro 4, and Euro 4 is the petrol pass. A diesel first registered as new in October 2015 had to meet Euro 6, and Euro 6 is the diesel pass. Those two sentences are why the myth spreads.

The myth breaks on the straddle years: 1992, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and from late 2026. It breaks on early certification, which is how a 2014 diesel can already be Euro 6. It breaks on used imports, where the UK plate year is not the type approval year. It breaks on a blank V.9, which is a paperwork gap, not a later stage. It breaks on a Q plate, which carries no age at all.

Euro 7 does not rewrite those myths early. New registrations have to meet it from 29 November 2027. Until then a seller who labels a current used car Euro 7 needs the certificate of conformity, not a brochure line about brakes and tyres.