Points in Flensburg: Germany's Driving Points System Explained

Germany's national driving points system is run out of a single federal office, and "points in Flensburg" is simply the popular name for it. Every driver in the country is scored on the same 8-point scale, regardless of which Land issued the underlying fine.

This page explains how points are assigned, what happens at each threshold under the law, how long an entry stays on file, and how to check a personal balance directly with the authority that keeps the register.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Why people say "points in Flensburg"

Germany's national driving points sit in a single federal database called the Fahreignungsregister, kept by the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA) in the town of Flensburg. That is the entire origin of the phrase: nothing about the points changes depending on where a driver lives or where the violation happened, the register is simply headquartered in Flensburg.

Every driver in Germany, regardless of which Land issued the fine, is scored on the same national scale. The current version of the system caps out at 8 points before intervention becomes mandatory.

Fine, points and driving ban are three separate things

A German traffic Ordnungswidrigkeit can carry up to three separate consequences, and it helps to keep them apart, since people often assume they are alternatives to one another. The fine (Bußgeld) is the financial penalty set out in the Bußgeldkatalog. The point entry in the Fahreignungsregister is a separate mark on the driver's fitness record, and a driving ban (Fahrverbot) under § 25 StVG, where one applies, is a temporary one to three month suspension of the right to drive, distinct from an outright withdrawal (Entziehung) under § 3 StVG, which extinguishes the license itself and requires a fresh application.

A single serious speeding offense can trigger all three at once: a fine, one or two points, and a driving ban of one to three months, depending on the tier in the fine catalogue. See the fine catalogue for how euro amounts and ban periods scale with the offense, and driving bans for how a Fahrverbot differs from a full license withdrawal.

The 8 point scale under § 4 StVG

Under § 4 StVG, once a driver reaches 8 points, the statute treats the holder as unfit to drive a motor vehicle and requires the license to be withdrawn. A new license cannot be issued for at least six months, and § 4 Abs. 10 StVG lets the authority require an MPU style Gutachten before reissue. Reaching 8 points is what triggers the automatic withdrawal; the MPU normally comes later, at the point of reapplying. See the MPU assessment page for what that evaluation involves.

A worked example

Take a driver who starts at zero. A first offense worth 2 points (for example a violation marked besonders verkehrssicherheitsbeeinträchtigend) brings the balance to 2, with no letter yet. A second offense eight months later worth 3 points brings the total to 5, crossing into the 4 to 5 point Ermahnung band, and the authority sends a written warning along with information about the Fahreignungsseminar.

If that same driver then commits a further 2 point offense, the balance reaches 7, inside the 6 to 7 point Verwarnung band, and the authority issues a formal warning. One more 2 point offense pushes the total to 9, past 8, and the license is withdrawn even though no single violation in the sequence was, on its own, especially severe.

That example shows the mechanic that catches people off guard: it is the running total that matters, not any single offense, and several smaller violations close together add up exactly as fast as one large one. Checking how speed camera enforcement feeds violations into this system is worth doing early, since speeding is the most common route into the points register.

How an entry becomes a point

Not every fine reaches the register. An Ordnungswidrigkeit is only entered in the Fahreignungsregister once the fine reaches 60 euros or more. That euro threshold comes from § 28 Abs. 3 StVG; § 40 FeV with Anlage 13 then supplies how many points the entry carries. Within that threshold, an entry is scored with 2 points where it is marked as particularly impairing to traffic safety (besonders verkehrssicherheitsbeeinträchtigend) and with 1 point otherwise. Anlage 13 sets out which offenses fall into each category, so it is worth checking the fine catalogue for a specific offense rather than assuming a rough scale.

Taking someone else's points is now its own offence

A long standing workaround was for somebody else to tell the authority that they were driving, so the points landed on their licence instead of the actual driver's. Money sometimes changed hands, and an industry grew up around arranging it.

That is now expressly prohibited. § 4c StVG, in force since 1 July 2026, bans undertaking to deceive an authority about who was involved in an offence listed in Anlage 13 of the Fahrerlaubnis-Verordnung, and equally bans offering to do so. A second limb catches putting someone in touch with a third party willing to take the blame, and offering that brokering service.

The penalty sits in § 23 StVG: an Ordnungswidrigkeit carrying a Geldbuße of up to thirty thousand euro.

Two points are worth drawing out. The prohibition reaches the person who offers or arranges the deception, not only the one who ultimately signs the statement, so the intermediary is squarely in scope. And it is drafted around the attempt (es zu unternehmen), so it does not depend on the authority actually being fooled.

Both changes arrived in the same instrument, the Fünftes Gesetz zur Änderung des Straßenverkehrsgesetzes und anderer straßenverkehrsrechtlicher Vorschriften, published at BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 142 on 18 May 2026 and in force on 1 July 2026. The same law lengthened the limitation period for most traffic offences from three months to six.

How long points stay on file

§ 29 StVG sets deletion periods (Tilgungsfristen) rather than one expiry date for the whole record, and each entry runs on its own clock from the date of the underlying decision.

The mechanic that trips people up is this: points do not fall away as a single block when the oldest entry expires. Each violation is deleted individually on its own schedule, so a driver's balance can quietly drop by one or two points at a time as older entries reach their own deletion date, while newer entries stay on file. A driver who checks a balance and sees it fall from 5 to 3 has not had anything forgiven; one entry has simply reached the end of its own Tilgungsfrist.

Two further details matter. An Überliegefrist keeps a deleted in principle entry visible in the register for a further period after its deletion date is reached, though during that period it can generally only be disclosed for narrow administrative purposes, such as Probezeit measures or fitness assessments, rather than counted as a live point. Separately, where a license has been withdrawn for unfitness, the deletion clock for that entry does not start running until the license is reissued or five years pass from the point the withdrawal decision became final, whichever comes first.

The Fahreignungsseminar: reducing a balance by one point

A driver holding between 1 and 5 points can voluntarily attend a Fahreignungsseminar, a two part course combining traffic pedagogy and traffic psychology instruction, under §§ 4 and 4a StVG. Successful attendance reduces the balance by exactly one point, and the completion certificate has to reach the licensing authority within two weeks of finishing the course.

The reduction is only available once every five years per driver, calculated from the date on the certificate, so it is not a repeatable tool for a driver who keeps offending. Cost is not fixed by statute since providers set their own price, so expect a market rate in the low hundreds of euros rather than a nominal administrative fee.

Checking a personal point balance

The KBA's Punkteauskunft, a register information request, is free regardless of which of the three channels a driver uses. The fastest is online, using a German ID card's Online-Ausweisfunktion together with an NFC capable phone or card reader, the AusweisApp software, and a six digit PIN; the result arrives as a downloadable PDF within minutes of authentication.

A driver without the online ID function can request the same information by post, sending a signed application with a copy of a valid ID, or in person at the KBA's public counter in Flensburg. No third party checking service should ever be needed, since the KBA provides this directly and free of charge.

Points during the Probezeit for new drivers

New drivers spend a two year Probezeit (probationary period) from the date the license is first issued, under § 2a StVG, and that period runs alongside the ordinary points system rather than replacing it. A single serious violation (schwerwiegende Zuwiderhandlung), or two less serious violations, obliges the licensing authority to order a remedial driving course (Aufbauseminar), which extends the Probezeit by two years.

A further serious violation, or two more less serious ones, after that course brings a written warning and a recommendation to attend traffic psychology counseling within two months; anything beyond that leads to withdrawal of the license. These measures apply on top of whatever points the same violations also generate in the Fahreignungsregister, so a new driver can face both an Aufbauseminar and an Ermahnung from the same set of offenses.

One national register, not sixteen state ones

The Fahreignungsregister is a federal database maintained by the KBA, and the point value attached to an offense, the intervention tiers in § 4 StVG, and the deletion periods in § 29 StVG apply identically everywhere in Germany. A speeding ticket issued in Bavaria and one issued in Schleswig-Holstein feed the same national balance under the same rules; only the underlying fine amount can, in narrow cases, be affected by local enforcement practice, never the points themselves.

From 18 points to 8: the 2014 reform

The current 8 point scale replaced an older 18 point system on 1 May 2014, when the register itself was renamed from the Verkehrszentralregister to the Fahreignungsregister. Existing balances were converted onto the new scale using a statutory conversion table in § 65 StVG rather than a simple fraction, so an older point count did not translate into a proportional share of 8.

The reform also introduced the rule that each entry carries its own individual Tilgungsfrist, replacing an older approach under which a driver's points were more likely to be treated as one running total. A driver who has held a license since before 2014 and remembers a higher point count from that era is not looking at an error; the number was recalculated once, on the date of the changeover, under the transition rule.

Frequently asked questions